Books by 
MARK TWAIN 

ST. JOAN OF ARC 

THE INNOCENTS ABROAD 

ROUGHING IT 

THE GILDED AGE 

A TRAMP ABROAD ^ 

FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR) 

PUDD'NHEAD WILSON 

SKETCHES NEW AND OLD 

THE AMERICAN CLAIMANT 

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 

A CONNECTICUT YANKEE AT THE COURT OP 

KING ARTHUR 
THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN 
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC 
LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

THE MAN THAT CORRUPTED HADLEYBUBG 
THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER 
THE $30,000 BEQUEST 
THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYEB 
TOM SAWYER ABROAD 
WHAT IS MAN? 
THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER 

ADAM'S DIARY 

A DOG'S TALE 

A DOUBLE-BARRELED DETECTIVE STORY 

EDITORIAL WILD OATS 

EVE'S DIARY 

IN DEFENSE OF HARRIET SHELLEY AND 

OTHER ESSAYS 
IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD? 
CAPT. STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN 
A HORSE'S TALE 
THE JUMPING FROG 
THE £1,000,000 BANK-NOTE 
TRAVELS AT HOME 
TRAVELS IN HISTORY 

MARK TWAIN'S LETTERS 
MARK TWAIN'S SPEECHES 



|TA^PF.tt & BROTHERS. NEW YORK 
(Established 1817] 




STEAMBOAT TIME 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 



BY 

MARK TWAIN 



ILLUSTRATED 




HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 

N1BW YORK AND LONDON 



'^^-^^ 



^5 



Life on the Mississippi 



Copyright, 1874 and 187s, by H. O. Houghton & Compant 

Copyright, 1883, 1899, 1903, by Samuel L. Clemens 

Copyright, 1911, 1917, by Clara Gabrilowitscb 

Printed in the United States of America 



< ( S. L. CLEMENS, 1 5 
H \ Mark Twain. / ? 

[tkade makk.] 



CONTENTS 



The "Body of the Nation" 3cv 

I. The River and Its History i 

II. The River and Its Explorers lo 

III. Frescoes from the Past 17 

IV. The Boys' Ambition 32 

V. I Want to be a Cub-pilot 38 

VI. A Cub-pilot's Experience 44 

VII. A Daring Deed 54 

VIII. Perplexing Lessons 63 

IX. Continued Perplexities 72 

X. Completing My Education 81 

XL The River Rises 89 

XII. Sounding 98 

XIIL A Pilot's Needs 107 

XIV. Rank and Dignity of Piloting 118 

XV. The Pilots' Monopoly 127 

XVI. Racing Days 143 

XVII. Cut-offs and Stephen 153 

XVIII. I Take a Few Extra Lessons 163 

XIX. Brown and I Exchange Compliments .... 171 

XX. A Catastrophe 177 

XXL A Section in My Biography 185 

XXII. I Return to My Muttons 186 

XXIII. Traveling Incognito 196 

XXIV. My Incognito is Exploded 200 

XXV. From Cairo to Hickman 208 

XXVI. Under Fire 216 



CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAGE 

XXVII. Some Imported Articles 225 

XXVIII. Uncle Mumford Unloads 231 

XXIX. A Few Specimen Bricks 242 

XXX. Sketches by the Way 252 

XXXI. A Thumb-print and what Came of It . . . 262 

XXXII. The Disposal of a Bonanza 281 

XXXIII. Refreshments and Ethics 287 

XXXIV. Tough Yarns 293 

XXXV. ViCKSBURG DURING THE TROUBLE 296 

XXXVI. The Professor's Yarn 305 

XXXVII. The End of the "Gold Dust" 314 

XXXVIII. The House Beautiful 316 

XXXIX. Manufactures and Miscreants 324 

XL. Castles and Culture 332 

XLI. The Metropolis of the South 339 

XLII. Hygiene and Sentiment 344 

XLIII. The Art of Inhumation ........ 349 

XLIV. City Sights 354 

XLV. Southern Sports 363 

XLVI. Enchantments and Enchanters 373 

XLVII. "Uncle Remus" and Mr. Cable 379 

XLVIII. Sugar and Postage 382 

XLIX. Episodes in Pilot Life 39^ 

L. The "Original Jacobs" 398 

LI. Reminiscences 405 

LII. A Burning Brand 4^4 

LIII. My Boyhood Home 4^7 

LIV. Past and Present 434 

LV. A Vendetta and Other Things 445 

LVL A Question of Law 453 

LVII. An Archangel 461 

LVIII. On the Upper River 469 

LIX. Legends and Scenery 477 

LX. Speculations and Conclusions 486 

Appendix 497 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Steamboat Time Frontispiece 

"Water Street Clerks" Facing p. 32 

The Orator of the Scow *♦ 86 

The Parting Chorus '* 146 

*'The Man's Eyes Opened Slowly" " 264 

The Cave-dwellers " 298 

Collision " 370 

"The House Began to Break into Applause". " 464 



THE "BODY OF THE NATION" 

But the basin of the Mississippi is the Body op 
THE Nation. All the other parts are but members, 
important in themselves, yet more important in their 
relations to this. Exclusive of the Lake basin and 
of 300,000 square miles in Texas and New Mexico, 
which in many aspects form a part of it, this basin 
contains about 1,250,000 square miles. In extent it 
is the second great valley of the world, being ex- 
ceeded only by that of the Amazon. The valley of 
the frozen Obi approaches it in extent; that of the 
La Plata comes next in space, and probably in 
habitable capacity, having about eight-ninths of its 
area; then comes that of the Yenisei, with about 
seven-ninths; the Lena, Amoor, Hoang-ho, Yang- 
tse-kiang, and Nile, five-ninths; the Ganges, less 
than one-half; the Indus, less than one-third; the 
Euphrates, one-fifth; the Rhine, one-fifteenth. It 
exceeds in extent the whole of Europe, exclusive of 
Russia, Norway, and Sweden. It would contain 
Austria four times, Germany or Spain five times, 
France six times, the British Islands or Italy ten times. 
Conceptions formed from the river-basins of Western 
Europe are rudely shocked when we consider the 
extent of the valley of the Mississippi ; nor are those 
formed from the sterile basins of the great rivers of 



THE "BODY OF THE NATION" 

Siberia, the lofty plateaus of Central Asia, or the 
mighty sweep of the swampy Amazon more adequate. 
Latitude, elevation, and rainfall all combine to render 
every part of the Mississippi Valley capable of sup- 
porting a dense population. As a dwelling-place for 
civilized man it is by jar the first upon our globe, — 
Editor's Table, Harper's Magazine, February, 1863, 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

CHAPTER I 

THE RIVER AND ITS HISTORY 

THE Mississippi is well worth reading about. It 
is not a commonplace river, but on the con- 
trary is in all ways remarkable. Considering the 
Missouri its main branch, it is the longest river in 
the world — ^four thousand three hundred miles. It 
seems safe to say that it is also the crookedest river 
in the world, since in one part of its journey it uses 
up one thousand three hundred miles to cover the 
same grotmd that the crow would fly over in six 
hundred and seventy-five. It discharges three times 
as much water as the St. Lawrence, twenty-five 
times as much as the Rhine, and three himdred and 
thirty-eight times as much as the Thames. No 
other river has so vast a drainage-basin; it draws 
its water-supply from twenty-eight states and terri- 
tories ; from Delaware on the Atlantic seaboard, and 
from all the country between that and Idaho on the 
Pacific slope — a spread of forty -five degrees of longi- 
tude. The Mississippi receives and carries to the 
Gulf water from fifty-four subordinate rivers that are 

I 



MARK TWAIN 

navigable by steamboats, and from some hundreds 
that are navigable by flats and keels. The area of its 
drainage-basin is as great as the combined areas of 
England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, France, Spain, 
Portugal, Germany, Austria, Italy, and Turkey ; and 
almost all this wide region is fertile; the Mississippi 
valley, proper, is exceptionally so. 

It is a remarkable river in this: that instead of 
widening toward its mouth, it grows narrower; grows 
narrower and deeper. From the junction of the Ohio 
to a point half-way down to the sea, the width aver- 
ages a mile in high water ; thence to the sea the width 
steadily diminishes, until, at the "Passes," above the 
mouth, it is but little over half a mile. At the 
junction of the Ohio the Mississippi's depth is eighty- 
seven feet; the depth increases gradually, reaching 
one hundred and twenty-nine just above the mouth. 

The difference in rise and fall is also remarkable — 
not in the upper, but in the lower river. The rise is 
tolerably uniform down to Natchez (three hundred 
and sixty miles above the mouth) — about fifty feet. 
But at Bayou La Fourche the river rises only twenty- 
four feet ; at New Orleans only fifteen, and just above 
the mouth only two and one-half. 

An article in the New Orleans Times-Democrat, 
based upon reports of able engineers, states that the 
river annually empties four hundred and six mil- 
lion tons of mud into the Gulf of Mexico — which 
brings to mind Captain Marryat's rude name for the 
Mississippi — **the Great Sewer." This mud, solidi- 
fied, would make a mass a mile square and two hun- 
dred and forty-one feet high. 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

The mud deposit gradually extends the land— but 
only gradually; it has extended it not quite a third 
of a mile in the two hundred years which have elapsed 
since the river took its place in history. 

The behef of the scientific people is that the mouth 
used to be at Baton Rouge, where the hills cease, and 
that the two hundred miles of land between there and 
the Gulf was built by the river. This gives us the 
age of that piece of country, without any trouble at 
all — one hundred and twenty thousand years. Yet 
it is much the youthfulest batch of country that Hes 
around there anywhere. 

The Mississippi is remarkable in still another way 
—its disposition to make prodigious jumps by cut- 
ting through narrow necks of land, and thus straight- 
ening and shortening itself. More than once it has 
shortened itself thirty miles at a single jump! 

These cut-offs have had curious effects : they have 
thrown several river towns out into the rural dis- 
tricts, and built up sand-bars and forests in front 
of them. The town of Delta used to be three miles 
below Vicksburg; a recent cut-off has radically 
changed the position, and Delta is now two miles 
above Vicksburg. 

Both of these river towns have been retired to the 
country by that cut-off. A cut-off plays havoc with 
boundary lines and jurisdictions : for instance, a man 
is living in the state of Mississippi to-day, a cut-off 
occurs to-night, and to-morrow the man finds him- 
self and his land over on the other side of the river, 
within the boundaries and subject to the laws of the 
state of Louisiana! Such a thing, happening in the 

3 



MARK TWAIN 

upper river in the old times, could have transferred a 
slave from Missouri to Illinois and made a free man 
of him. 

The Mississippi does not alter its locality by cut- 
offs alone : it is always changing its habitat bodily — 
is always moving bodily sidewise. At Hard Times, 
Louisiana, the river is two miles west of the region 
it used to occupy. As a result, the original site of 
that settlement is not now in Louisiana at all, but 
on the other side of the river, in the state of Missis- 
sippi. Nearly the whole of that one thousand three 
hundred miles of old Mississippi River which La Salle 
floated down in his canoes, two hundred years ago, is 
good solid dry ground now. The river lies to the 
right of it, in places, and to the left of it in other 
places. 

Although the Mississippi's mud builds land but 
slowly, down at the mouth, where the Gulf's billows 
interfere with its work, it builds fast enough in better 
protected regions higher up: for instance. Prophet's 
Island contained one thousand five hundred acres of 
land thirty years ago ; since then the river has added 
seven hundred acres to it. 

But enough of these examples of the mighty 
stream's eccentricities for the present — I will give a 
few more of them further along in the book. 

Let us drop the Mississippi's physical history, and 
say a word about its historical history — so to speak. 
We can glance briefly at its slumbrous first epoch in a 
couple of short chapters; at its second and wider- 
awake epoch in a couple more; at its flushest and 
widest-awake epoch in a good many succeeding 

4 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

chapters; and then talk about its comparatively 
tranquil present epoch in what shall be left of the 
book. 

The world and the books are so accustomed to use, 
and over-use, the word "new" in connection with 
our country, that we early get and permanently re- 
tain the impression that there is nothing old about 
it. We do of course know that there are several 
comparatively old dates in American history, but 
the mere figures convey to our minds no just idea, 
no distinct realization, of the stretch of time which 
they represent. To say that De Soto, the first 
white man who ever saw the Mississippi River, saw 
it in 1542, is a remark which states a fact without 
interpreting it: it is something like giving the 
dimensions of a simset by astronomical measure- 
ments, and cataloguing the colors by their scientific 
names — ^as a result, you get the bald fact of the 
simset, but you don't see the sunset. It would have 
been better to paint a picture of it. 

The date 1542, standing by itself, means little or 
nothing to us ; but when one groups a few neighbor- 
ing historical dates and facts around it, he adds 
perspective and color, and then realizes that this is 
one of the American dates which is quite respectable 
for age. 

For instance, when the Mississippi was first seen by 
a white man, less than a quarter of a century had 
elapsed since Francis I.'s defeat at Pavia; the death 
of Raphael; the death of Bayard, sans peur et sans 
reproche; the driving out of the Knights-Hospitallers 
from Rhodes by the Turks; and the placarding of the 

5 



MARK TWAIN 

Ninety-five Propositions — the act which began the 
Reformation. When De Soto took his glimpse of the 
river, Ignatius Loyola was an obscure name; the 
order of the Jesuits was not yet a year old ; Michael 
Angelo's paint was not yet dry on the "Last Judg- 
ment" in the Sistine Chapel; Mary Queen of Scots 
was not yet born, but would be before the year 
closed. Catherine de Medici was a child ; Elizabeth 
of England was not yet in her teens; Calvin, Ben- 
venuto Cellini, and the Emperor Charles V. were 
at the top of their fame, and each was manufacturing 
history after his own peculiar fashion; Margaret 
of Navarre was writing the ' * Heptameron " and some 
religious books — the first survives, the others are 
forgotten, wit and indelicacy being sometimes better 
literature-preservers than holiness; lax court morals 
and the absurd chivalry business were in full feather, 
and the joust and the tournament w^ere tlie frequent 
pastime of titled fine gentlemen who could fight 
better than they could spell, while religion was the 
passion of their ladies, and the classifying their 
offspring into children of full rank and children by 
brevet their pastime. In fact, all around, religion 
was in a peculiarly blooming condition : the Council 
of Trent was being called; the Spanish Inquisition 
was roasting, and racking, and burning, with a free 
hand; elsewhere on the Continent the nations were 
being persuaded to holy living by the sword and fire ; 
in England, Henry VIII. had suppressed the monas- 
teries, burned Fisher and another bishop or two, and 
was getting his English Reformation and his harem 
effectively started. When De Soto stood on the 

6 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

banks of the Mississippi, it was still two years before 
Luther's death; eleven years before the burning of 
Servetus; thirty years before the St. Bartholomew 
slaughter; Rabelais had not yet published; Don 
Quixote was not yet written; Shakespeare was not 
yet bom; a hundred long years must still elapse 
before Englishmen would hear the name of Oliver 
Cromwell. 

Unquestionably the discovery of the Mississippi is 
a datable fact which considerably mellows and modi- 
fies the shiny newness of our country, and gives her a 
most respectable outside aspect of rustiness and 
antiquity. 

De Soto merely glimpsed the river, then died and 
was buried in it by his priests and soldiers. One 
would expect the priests and the soldiers to multiply 
the river's dimensions by ten — the Spanish custom of 
the day — and thus move other adventurers to go 
at once and explore it. On the contrary, their nar- 
ratives, when they reached home, did not excite that 
amount of curiosity. The Mississippi was left un- 
visited by whites during a term of years which seems 
incredible in our energetic days. One may "sense" 
the interval to his mind, after a fashion, by dividing 
it up in this way: after De Soto glimpsed the river, 
a fraction short of a quarter of a century elapsed, 
and then Shakespeare was born; lived a trifle more 
than half a century, then died; and when he had 
been in his grave considerably more than half a 
century, the second white man saw the Mississippi. 
In our day we don't allow a hundred and thirty years 
to elapse between glimpses of a marvel. If some- 

7 



MARK TWAIN 

body should discover a creek in the county next to 
the one that the North Pole is in, Europe and America 
woiild start fifteen costly expeditions thither; one to 
explore the creek, and the other fourteen to hunt for 
each other. 

For more than a hundred and fifty years there had 
been white settlements on our Atlantic coasts. These 
people were in intimate communication with the 
Indians: in the south the Spaniards were robbing, 
slaughtering, enslaving, and converting them ; higher 
up, the English were trading beads and blankets to 
them for a consideration, and throwing in civiliza- 
tion and whisky, "for lagniappe";^ and in Canada 
the French were schooling them in a rudimentary 
way, missionary ing among them, and drawing whole 
populations of them at a time to Quebec, and later 
to Montreal, to buy furs of them. Necessarily, then, 
these various clusters of whites must have heard of 
the great river of the Far West ; and indeed, they did 
hear of it vaguely — so vaguely and indefinitely that 
its course, proportions, and locality were hardly 
even guessable. The mere mysteriousness of the 
matter ought to have fired curiosity and compelled 
exploration; but this did not occur. Apparently 
nobody happened to want such a river, nobody 
needed it, nobody was curious about it; so, for a 
century and a half the Mississippi remained out of the 
market and undisturbed. When De Soto found it, 
he was not hunting for a river, and had no present 
occasion for one; consequently, he did not value it 
or even take any particular notice of it. 

1 See page 
8 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

But at last, La Salle, the Frenchman, conceived the 
idea of seeking out that river and exploring it. It 
always happens that when a man seizes upon a 
neglected and important idea, people inflamed with 
the same notion crop up all around. It happened so 
in this instance. 

Naturally the question suggests itself. Why did 
these people want the river now when nobody had 
wanted it in the five preceding generations? Ap- 
parently it was because at this late day they thought 
they had discovered a way to make it useful; for it 
had come to be believed that the Mississippi emptied 
into the Gulf of California, and therefore afforded a 
short cut from Canada to China. Previously the 
supposition had been that it emptied into the 
Atlantic, or Sea of Virginia. 



CHAPTER II 

THE RIVER AND ITS EXPLORERS 

I A SALLE himself sued for certain high privi- 
^ leges, and they were graciously accorded him by 
Louis XIV. of inflated memory. Chief among them 
was the privilege to explore, far and wide, and build 
forts, and stake out continents, and hand the same 
over to the king, and pay the expenses himself; 
receiving, in return, some little advantages of one 
sort or another; among them the monopoly of 
buffalo-hides. He spent several years, and about all 
of his money, in making perilous and painfiil trips 
between Montreal and a fort which he had built on 
the Illinois, before he at last succeeded in getting 
his expedition in such a shape that he could strike for 
the Mississippi. 

And meantime other parties had had better for- 
tune. In 1673, Joliet the merchant, and Marquette 
the priest, crossed the country and reached the 
banks of the Mississippi. They went by way of the 
Great Lakes; and from Green Bay, in canoes, by 
the way of Fox River and the Wisconsin. Mar- 
quette had solemnly contracted, on the feast of the 
Immaculate Conception, that if the Virgin would 
permit him to discover the great river, he would 
name it Conception, in her honor. He kept his 

xo 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

word. In that day, all explorers traveled with an 
outfit of priests. De Soto had twenty-four with him. 
La Salle had several, also. The expeditions were 
often out of meat, and scant of clothes, but they 
always had the furniture and other requisites for the 
mass; they were always prepared, as one of the 
quaint chronicles of the time phrased it, to "explain 
hell to the salvages." 

On the 17th of June, 1673, the canoes of Joliet and 
Marquette and their five subordinates reached the 
junction of the Wisconsin with the Mississippi. Mr. 
Parkman says : * * Before them a wide and rapid current 
coursed athwart their way, by the foot of lofty heights 
wrapped thick in forests." He continues: "Turning 
southward, they paddled down the stream, through a 
solitude unrelieved by the faintest trace of man." 

A big catfish collided with Marquette's canoe, and 
startled him; and reasonably enough, for he had 
been warned by the Indians that he was on a fool- 
hardy journey, and even a fatal one, for the river 
contained a demon "whose roar could be heard at a 
great distance, and who would engulf them in the 
abyss where he dwelt." I have seen a Mississippi 
catfish that was more than six feet long, and weighed 
two hundred and fifty pounds; and if Marquette's 
fish was the fellow to that one, he had a fair right 
to think the river's roaring demon was come. 

At length the buffalo began to appear, grazing in herds on the 
great prairies which then bordered the river; and Marquette 
describes the fierce and stupid look of the old bulls as they stared 
at the intruders through the tangled mane which nearly blinded 
them. 

II 



MARK TWAIN 
The voyagers moved cautiously: 

Landed at night and made a fire to cook their evening meal; 
then extinguished it, embarked again, paddled some way farther, 
and anchored in the stream, keeping a man on the watch till 
morning. 

They did this day after day and night after night ; and 
at the end of two weeks they had not seen a human 
being. The river was an awful solitude, then. And 
it is now, over most of its stretch. 

But at the close of the fortnight they one day came 
upon the footprints of men in the mud of the western 
bank — a Robinson Crusoe experience which carries an 
electric shiver with it yet, when one stumbles on it in 
print. They had been warned that the river Indians 
were as ferocious and pitiless as the river demon, and 
destroyed all comers without waiting for provocation ; 
but no matter, Joliet and Marquette struck into the 
country to hunt up the proprietors of the tracks. 
They found them by and by, and were hospitably 
received and well treated — if to be received by an 
Indian chief who has taken off his last rag in order to 
appear at his level best is to be received hospitably; 
and if to be treated abundantly to fish, porridge, 
and other game, including dog, and have these things 
forked into one's mouth by the ungloved fingers of 
Indians, is to be well treated. In the morning the 
chief and six hundred of his tribesmen escorted the 
Frenchmen to the river and bade them a friendly 
farewell. 

On the rocks above the present city of Alton they 
found some rude and fantastic Indian paintings, 
which they describe. A short distance below **a tor- 

12 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

rent of yellow mud rushed furiously athwart the calm 
blue current of the Mississippi, boiling and surging 
and sweeping in its course logs, branches, and up- 
rooted trees." This was the mouth of the Missouri, 
"that savage river," which ''descending from its 
mad career through a vast unknown of barbarism, 
poured its turbid floods into the bosom of its gentle 
sister." 

By and by they passed the mouth of the Ohio ; they 
passed canebrakes; they fought mosquitoes; they 
floated along, day after day, through the deep silence 
and loneliness of the river, drowsing in the scant 
shade of makeshift awnings, and broiling with the 
heat; they encoimtered and exchanged civilities 
with another party of Indians; and at last they 
reached the mouth of the Arkansas (about a month 
out from their starting-point), where a tribe of war- 
whooping savages swarmed out to meet and murder 
them; but they appealed to the Virgin for help; 
so in place of a fight there was a feast, and plenty of 
pleasant palaver and fol-de-rol. 

They had proved to their satisfaction that the 
Mississippi did not empty into the Gulf of Cali- 
fornia or into the Atlantic. They believed it emp- 
tied into the Gulf of Mexico. They turned back 
now, and carried their great news to Canada. 

But belief is not proof. It was reserved for La 
Salle to furnish the proof. He was provokingly 
delayed by one misfortune after another, but at last 
got his expedition under way at the end of the year 
1 68 1. In the dead of winter he and Henri de Tonty, 
son of Lorenzo Tonty, who invented the tontine, 

13 



MARK TWAIN 

his lieutenant, started down the IlHnois, with a fol- 
lowing of eighteen Indians brought from New 
England, and twenty-three Frenchmen. They moved 
in procession down the surface of the frozen river, 
on foot, and dragging their canoes after them on 
sledges. 

At Peoria Lake they struck open water, and pad- 
dled thence to the Mississippi and turned their prows 
southward. They plowed through the fields of 
floating ice, past the mouth of the Missouri; past 
the mouth of the Ohio, by and by; ''and, gliding by 
the wastes of bordering swamp, landed on the 24th 
of February near the Third Chickasaw Bluffs," 
where they halted and built Fort Prudhomme. 

* 'Again," says Mr. Parkman, " they embarked ; and 
with every stage of their adventurous progress, the 
mystery of this vast new world was more and more 
unveiled. More and more they entered the realms of 
spring. The hazy sunlight, the warm and drowsy 
air, the tender foliage, the opening flowers, be- 
tokened the reviving life of nature." 

Day by day they floated down the great bends, in 
the shadow of the dense forests, and in time arrived at 
the mouth of the Arkansas. First they were greeted 
by the natives of this locality as Marquette had be- 
fore been greeted by them — with the booming of the 
war-drum and a flourish of arms. The Virgin com- 
posed the difliculty in Marquette's case ; the pipe of 
peace did the same office for La Salle. The white 
man and the red man struck hands and enter- 
tained each other during three days. Then, to the 
admiration of the savages. La Salle set up a cross 

14 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

with the arms of France on it, and took possession of 
the whole country for the king — the cool fashion of 
the time — while the priest piously consecrated the 
robbery with a hymn. The priest explained the 
mysteries of the faith "by signs," for the saving of 
the savages; thus compensating them with possible 
possessions in heaven for the certain ones on earth 
which they had just been robbed of. And also, by 
signs. La Salle drew from these simple children of the 
forest acknowledgments of fealty to Louis the Putrid, 
over the water. Nobody smiled at these colossal 
ironies. 

These performances took place on the site of the 
future town of Napoleon, Arkansas, and there the 
first confiscation cross was raised on the banks of 
the great river. Marquette's and Joliet's voyage of 
discovery ended at the same spot — the site of the 
future town of Napoleon. When De Soto took his 
fleeting glimpse of the river, away back in the dim 
early days, he took it from that same spot — the site of 
the future town of Napoleon, Arkansas. Therefore, 
three out of the four memorable events connected 
with the discovery and exploration of the mighty 
river occurred, by accident, in one and the same 
place. It is a most curious distinction, when one 
comes to look at it and think about it. France stole 
that vast country on that spot, the future Napoleon; 
and by and by Napoleon himself was to give the 
country back again — make restitution, not to the 
owners, but to their white American heirs. 

The voyagers journeyed on, touching here and 
there; "passed the sites, since become historic, of 

15 



MARK TWAIN 

Vicksburg and Grand Gulf"; and visited an impos- 
ing Indian monarch in the Teche country, whose 
capital city was a substantial one of sun-baked 
bricks mixed with straw — better houses than many 
that exist there now. The chief's house contained 
an audience-room forty feet square; and there he 
received Tonty in state, surrounded by sixty old 
men clothed in white cloaks. There was a temple 
in the town, with a mud wall about it ornamented 
with skulls of enemies sacrificed to the sun. 

The voyagers visited the Natchez Indians, near the 
site of the present city of that name, where they 
found a ** religious and political depotism, a privileged 
class descended from the sun, a temple, and a sacred 
fire." It must have been like getting home again; 
it was home again; it was home with an advantage, 
in fact, for it lacked Louis XIV. 

A few more days swept swiftly by, and La Salle 
stood in the shadow of his confiscating cross, at a 
meeting of the waters from Delaware, and from 
Itasca, and from the mountain ranges close upon the 
Pacific, with the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, his 
task finished, his prodigy achieved. Mr. Parkman, 
in closing his fascinating narrative, thus sums up: 

On that day the realm of France received on parchment a 
stupendous accession. The fertile plains of Texas; the vast 
basin of the Mississippi, from its frozen northern springs to the 
sultry borders of the Gulf; from the woody ridges of the Al- 
leghanies to the bare peaks of the Rocky Mountains — a region 
of savannas and forests, sun-cracked deserts and grassy prairies, 
watered by a thousand rivers, ranged by a thousand warlike 
tribes, passed beneath the scepter of the Sultan of Versailles ; and 
all by virtue of a feeble human voice, inaudible a half a mile. 

i6 



CHAPTER III 

FRESCOS FROM THE PAST 

A PPARENTLY the river was ready for business, 
r\ now. But no; the distribution of a population 
along its banks was as calm and deliberate and time- 
devouring a process as the discovery and exploration 
had been. 

Seventy years elapsed after the exploration before 
the river's borders had a white population worth 
considering; and neariy fifty more before the river 
had a commerce. Between La Salle's opening of the 
river and the time when it may be said to have be- 
come the vehicle of anything like a regular and active 
commerce, seven sovereigns had occupied the throne 
of England, America had become an independent 
nation, Louis XIV. and Louis XV. had rotted and 
died, the French monarchy had gone down in the red 
tempest of the Revolution, and Napoleon was a 
name that was beginning to be talked about. Truly, 
there were snails in those days. 

The river's eariiest commerce was in great barges 
— keelboats, broadhorns. They floated and sailed 
from the upper rivers to New Orieans, changed car- 
goes there, and were tediously warped and poled 
back by hand. A voyage down and back some- 
times occupied nine months. In time this commerce 

17 



MARK TWAIN 

increased until it gave employment to hordes of 
rough and hardy men; rude, uneducated, brave, 
suffering terrific hardships with sailor-like stoicism; 
heavy drinkers, coarse frolickers in moral sties like 
the Natchez-under-the-hill of that day, heavy 
fighters, reckless fellows, every one, elephantinely 
jolly, foul- wit ted, profane, prodigal of their money, 
bankrupt at the end of the trip, fond of barbaric 
finery, prodigious braggarts; yet, in the main, 
honest, trustworthy, faithful to promises and duty, 
and often picturesquely magnanimous. 

By and by the steamboat intruded. Then, for 
fifteen or twenty years, these men continued to run 
their keelboats down-stream, and the steamers did 
all of the up-stream business, the keelboatmen selling 
their boats in New Orleans, and returning home as 
deck-passengers in the steamers. 

But after a while the steamboats so increased in 
number and in speed that they were able to absorb 
the entire commerce; and then keelboating died a 
permanent death. The keelboatman became a deck- 
hand, or a mate, or a pilot on the steamer ; and when 
steamer-berths were not open to him, he took a 
berth on a Pittsburg coal-fiat, or on a pine raft 
constructed in the forests up toward the sources of 
the Mississippi. 

In the heyday of the steamboating prosperity, the 
river from end to end was flaked with coal-fieets and 
timber-rafts, all managed by hand, and employing 
hosts of the rough characters whom I have been try- 
ing to describe. I remember the annual processions 
of mighty rafts that used to gUde by Hannibal when 

i8 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

I was a boy — an acre or so of white, sweet -smelling 
boards in each raft, a crew of two dozen men or 
more, three or four wigwams scattered about the 
raft's vast level space for storm-quarters — and I 
remember the rude ways and the tremendous talk 
of their big crews, the ex-keelboatmen and their 
admiringly patterning successors; for we used to 
swim out a quarter or a third of a mile and get on 
these rafts and have a ride. 

By way of illustrating keelboat talk and manners, 
and that now departed and hardly remembered raft 
life, I will throw in, in this place, a chapter from a 
book which I have been working at, by fits and starts, 
during the past five or six years, and raay possibly 
finish in the course of five or six more. The book is a 
story which details some passages in the life of an 
ignorant village boy, Huck Finn, son of the town 
drunkard of my time out West, there. He has run 
away from his persecuting father, and from a 
persecuting good widow who wishes to make a nice, 
truth-telling, respectable boy of him ; and with him a 
slave of the widow's has also escaped. They have 
found a fragment of a lumber-raft (it is high water 
and dead summer-time) , and are floating down the 
river by night, and hiding in the willows by day — 
bound for Cairo, whence the negro will seek freedom 
in the heart of the free states. But, in a fog, they 
pass Cairo without knowing it. By and by they 
begin to suspect the truth, and Huck Finn is per- 
suaded to end the dismal suspense by swimming 
down to a huge raft which they have seen in the 
distance ahead of them, creeping aboard under cover 

19 



MARK TWAIN 

of the darkness, and gathering the needed informa- 
tion by eavesdropping: 

But you know a young person can't wait very well when he 
is impatient to find a thing out. We talked it over, and by 
and by Jim said it was such a black night, now, that it wouldn't 
be no risk to swim down to the big raft and crawl aboard and 
listen — they would talk about Cairo, because they would be 
calculating to go ashore there for a spree, maybe; or anyway 
they would send boats ashore to buy whisky or fresh meat or 
something. Jim had a wonderful level head, for a nigger: he 
could most always start a good plan when you wanted one. 

I stood up and shook my rags off and jumped into the river, 
and struck out for the raft's light. By and by, when I got 
down nearly to her, I eased up and went slow and cautious. 
But everything was all right — nobody at the sweeps. So I 
swum down along the raft till I was m-ost abreast the camp-fire 
in the middle, then I crawled aboard and inched along and got 
in among some bundles of shingles on the weather side of the 
fire. There was thirteen men there — they was the watch on 
deck of course. And a mighty rough-looking lot, too. They 
had a jug, and tin cups, and they kept the jug moving. One 
man was singing — roaring, you may say; and it wasn't a nice 
song — for a parlor, SLnywety. He roared through his nose, and 
strung out the last word of every line very long. When he was 
done they all fetched a kind of Injun war-whoop, and then 
another was sung. It begun: 

"There was a woman in our towdn, 
In our towdn did dwed'l [dwell], 
She loved her husband dear-i-lee. 
But another man twyste as wed'l. 

"Singing too, riloo, riloo, riloo, 

Ri-too, riloo, rilay e. 

She loved her husband dear-i-lee, 
But another man twyste as wed'l." 

And so on — fourteen verses. It was kind of poor, and when 
he was going to start on the next verse one of them said it was 
the tune the old cow died on; and another one said: "Oh, give 

20 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

US a rest!" And another one told him to take a walk. They 
made fun of him till he got mad and jumped up and begun to 
cuss the crowd, and said he could lam any thief in the lot. 

They was all about to make a break for him, but the biggest 
man there jumped up and says: 

"Set whar you are, gentlemen. Leave him to me; he's my 
meat." 

Then he jumped up in the air three times, and cracked his 
heels together every time. He flung off a buckskin coat that 
was all hung with fringes, and says, ''You lay thar tell the 
chawin-up's done "; and flung his hat down, which was all over 
ribbons, and says, "You lay thar tell his sufferin's is over." 

Then he jumped up in the air and cracked his heels together 
again, and shouted out: 

"Whoo-oop! I'm the old original iron-jawed, brass-mounted, 
copper-belHed corpse-maker from the wilds of Arkansaw! Look 
at me! I'm the man they call Sudden Death and General 
Desolation! Sired by a hurricane, dam'd by an earthquake, 
half-brother to the cholera, nearly related to the smallpox on 
the mother's side! Look at me! I take nineteen alHgators and 
a bar'l of whisky for breakfast when I'm in robust health, and 
a bushel of rattlesnakes and a dead body when I'm aiUng. I 
spHt the everlasting rocks with my glance, and I squench the 
thunder when I speak! Whoo-oop! Stand back and give me 
room according to my strength! Blood's my natural drink, and 
the wails of the dying is music to my ear. Cast your eye on 
me, gentlemen! and lay low and hold your breath, for I'm 'bout 
to turn myself loose!" 

All the time he was getting this off, he was shaking his head 
and looking fierce,, and kind of swelling around in a Uttle circle, 
tucking up his wristbands, and now and then straightening up 
and beating his breast with his fist, saying, "Look at me, gentle- 
men!" When he got through, he jumped up and cracked his 
heels together three times, and let off a roaring "Whoo-oop! 
I'm the bloodiest son of a wildcat that Uves!" 

Then the man that had started the row tilted his old slouch 
hat down over his right eye; then he bent stooping forward, with 
his back sagged and his south end sticking out far, and his fists 
a-shoving out and drawing in in front of him, and so went around 
in a little circle about three times, swelling himself up and 
breathing hard. Then he straightened, and jumped up and 

21 



MARK TWAIN 

cracked his heels together three times before he lit again (that 
made them cheer), and he began to shout like this: 

"Whoo-oop! bow your neck and spread, for the kingdom of 
sorrow's a-coming! Hold me down to the earth, for I feel my 
powers a-working! whoo-oop! I'm a child of sin, dotiH let me 
get a start! Smoked glass, here, for all! Don't attempt to 
look at me with the naked eye, gentlemen! When I'm playful 
I use the meridians of longitude and parallels of latitude for a 
seine, and drag the Atlantic Ocean for whales! I scratch my 
head with the lightning and purr myself to sleep with the thunder! 
When I'm cold, I bile the Gulf of Mexico and bathe in it; when 
I'm hot I fan myself with an equinoctial storm; when I'm 
thirsty I reach up and suck a cloud dry like a sponge; when I 
range the earth hungry, famine follows in my tracks ! Whoo-oop I 
Bow your neck and spread! I put my hand on the sun's face 
and make it night in the earth; I bite a piece out of the moon 
and hurry the seasons ; I shake myself and crumble the moun- 
tains! Contemplate me through leather — don't use the naked 
eye! I'm the man with a petrified heart and biler-iron bowels! 
The massacre of isolated communities is the pastime of my 
idle moments, the destruction of nationalities the serious busi- 
ness of my life! The boundless vastness of the great American 
desert is my inclosed property, and I bury my dead on my 
own premises!" He jumped up and cracked his heels together 
three times before he lit (they cheered him again), and as he come 
down he shouted out: "Whoo-oop! bow your neck and spread, 
for the Pet Child of Calamity's a-coming!" 

Then the other one went to swelling around and blowing 
again — the first one — the one they called Bob; next, the Child 
of Calamity chipped in again, bigger than ever; then they both 
got at it at the same time, swelling round and round each other 
and punching their fists most into each other's faces, and whoop- 
ing and jawing hke Injuns; then Bob called the Child names, 
and the Child called him names back again; next. Bob called 
him a heap rougher names, and the Child come back at him with 
the very worst kind of language; next. Bob knocked the Child's 
hat off, and the Child picked it up and kicked Bob's ribbony 
hat about six foot; Bob went and got it and said never mind, this 
wam't going to be the last of this thing, because he was a man 
that never forgot and never forgive, and so the Child better 
look out, for there was a time a-coming, just as sure as he was a 

22 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

living man, that he would have to answer to him with the best 
blood in his body. The Child said no man was willinger than 
he for that time to come, and he would give Bob fair warning, 
now, never to cross his path again, for he could never rest till 
he had waded in his blood, for such was his nature, though he 
was sparing him now on account of his family, if he had one. 

Both of them was edging away in different directions, growling 
and shaking their heads and going on about what they was 
going to do; but a little black-whiskered chap skipped up and 
says: 

"Come back here, you couple of chicken-livered cowards, and 
I'll thrash the two of ye!" 

And he done it, too. He snatched them, he jerked them this 
way and that, he booted them around, he knocked them sprawl- 
ing faster than they could get up. Why, it wam't two minutes 
till they begged like dogs — and how the other lot did yell and 
laugh and clap their hands all the way through, and shout, 
"Sail in, Corpse-Maker!" "Hi! at him again. Child of Ca- 
lamity!" "Bully for you, Httle Davy!" Well, it was a perfect 
pow-wow for a while. Bob and the Child had red noses and 
black eyes when they got through. Little Davy made them 
own up that they was sneaks and cowards and not fit to eat 
with a dog or drink with a nigger; then Bob and the Child shook 
hands with each other, very solemn, and said they had always 
respected each other and was willing to let bygones be bygones. 
So then they washed their faces in the river; and just then there 
was a loud order to stand by for a crossing, and some of them 
went forward to man the sweeps there, and the rest went aft to 
handle the after sweeps. 

I lay still and waited for fifteen minutes, and had a smoke 
out of a pipe that one of them left in reach; then the crossing 
was finished, and they stumped back and had a drink around 
and went to talking and singing again. Next they got out an 
old fiddle, and one played, and another patted juba, and the 
rest turned themselves loose on a regular old-fashioned keelboat 
breakdown. They couldn't keep that up very long without 
getting winded, so by and by they settled around the jug again. 

They sung "JoHy, Jolly Raftsman's the Life for Me," with 
a rousing chorus, and then they got to talking about differences 
betwixt hogs, and their different kind of habits; and next about 
women and their different ways; and next about the best wa)rs 

2.? 



MARK TWAIN 

to put out houses that was afire; and next about what ought to 
be done with the Injuns; and next about what a king had to do, 
and how much he got; and next about how to make cats fight; 
and next about what to do when a man has fits; and next about 
differences betwixt clear-water rivers and muddy-water ones. 
The man they called Ed said the muddy Mississippi water was 
wholesomer to drink than the clear water of the Ohio; he said 
if you let a pint of this yaller Mississippi water settle, you would 
have about a half to three-quarters of an inch of mud in the 
bottom, according to the stage of the river, and then it wam't 
no better than Ohio water — what you wanted to do was to keep 
it stirred up — and when the river was low, keep mud on hand 
to put in and thicken the water up the way it ought to be. 

The Child of Calamity said that was so; he said there was 
nutritiousness in the mud, and a man that drunk Mississippi 
water could grow com in his stomach if he wanted to. He says: 

"You look at the graveyards; that tells the tale. Trees 
won't grow worth shucks in a Cincinnati graveyard, but in a 
Sent Louis graveyard they grow upwards of eight hundred foot 
high. It's all on account of the water the people drunk before 
they laid up. A Cincinnati corpse don't richen a soil any." 

And they talked about how Ohio water didn't like to mix with 
Mississippi water. Ed said if you take the Mississippi on a 
rise when the Ohio is low, you'll find a wide band of clear water 
all the way down the east side of the Mississippi for a hundred 
mile or more, and the minute you get out a quarter of a mile 
from shore and pass the line, it is all thick and yaller the rest of 
the way across. Then they talked about how to keep tobacco 
from getting moldy, and from that they went into ghosts and 
told about a lot that other folks had seen; but Ed says: 

"Why don't you tell something that you've seen yourselves? 
Now let me have a say. Five years ago I was on a raft as big as 
this, and right along here it was a bright moonshiny night, and 
I was on watch and boss of the stabboard oar forrard, and one 
of my pards was a man named Dick Allbright, and he come along 
to where I was sitting, forrard— gaping and stretching, he was— 
and stooped down on the edge of the raft and washed his face 
in the river, and come and set down by me and got out his pipe, 
and had just got it filled, when he looks up and says: 

"'Why looky-here,' he says, 'ain't that Buck Miller's place, 
over yander in the bend?' 

24 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

"'Yes/ says I, 'it is — why?' He laid his pipe down and 
leaned his head on his hand, and says : 

"'I thought we'd be furder down.' I says: 

"'I thought it, too, when I went off watch' — we was standing 
six hours on and six off — 'but the boys told me,' I says, 'that 
the raft didn't seem to hardly move, for the last hour,' says I, 
'though she's a-slipping along all right now,' says I. He give 
a kind of a groan, and says: 

"'I've seed a raft act so before, along here,' he says, "pears 
to me the current has most quit above the head of this bend 
durin' the last two years,' he says. 

"Well, he raised up two or three times, and looked away off 
and around on the water. That started me at it, too. A body 
is always doing what he sees somebody else doing, though there 
mayn't be no sense in it. Pretty soon I see a black something 
floating on the water away off to stabboard and quartering 
behind us. I see he was looking at it, too. I says: 

" ' What's that? ' He says, sort of pettish : 

""Tain't nothing but an old empty bar'l.' 

"'An empty bar'l!' says I, 'why,' says I, 'a spy-glass is a fool 
to your eyes. How can you tell it's an empty bar'l?' He says: 

"'I don't know; I reckon it ain't a bar'l, but I thought it 
might be,' says he. 

"'Yes,' I says, 'so it might be, and it might be anything else, 
too; a body can't tell nothing about it, such a distance as that,' 
I says. 

"We hadn't nothing else to do, so we kept on watching it. By 
and by I says: 

'"Why, looky-here, Dick AUbright, that thing's a-gaining on 
us, I believe.' 

"He never said nothing. The thing gained and gained, and 
I judged it must be a dog that was about tired out. Well, we 
swung down into the crossing, and the thing floated across the 
bright streak of the moonshine, and by George, it was a bar'L 
Says I: 

'"Dick AUbright, what made you think that thing was a bar'l, 
when it was half a mile off? ' says I. Says he: 

"'I don't know.' Says I: 

" ' You tell me, Dick AUbright.' Says he: 

"'WeU, I knowed it was a bar'l; I've seen it before; lots has 
seen it; they says it's a ha'nted bar'l.' 

25 



MARK TWAIN 

"I called the rest of the watch, and they come and stood 
there, and I told them what Dick said. It floated right along 
abreast, now, and didn't gain any more. It was about twenty 
foot off. Some was for having it aboard, but the rest didn't 
want to. Dick AUbright said rafts that had fooled with it had 
got bad luck by it. The captain of the watch said he didn't 
believe in it. He said he reckoned the bar'l gained on us because 
it was in a Uttle better current than what we was. He said it 
would leave by and by. 

"So then we went to talking about other things, and we had 
a song, and then a breakdown; and after that the captain of the 
watch called for another song; but it was clouding up now, and 
the bar'l stuck right thar in the same place, and the song didn't 
seem to have much warm-up to it, somehow, and so they didn't 
finish it, and there wam't any cheers, but it sort of dropped flat, 
and nobody said anything for a minute. Then everybody tried 
to talk at once, and one chap got off a joke, but it wam't no use, 
they didn't laugh, and even the chap that made the joke didn't 
laugh at it, which ain't usual. We all just settled down glum, 
and watched the bar'l, and was oneasy and oncomfortable. 
Well, sir, it shut down black and still, and then the wind began 
to moan around, and next the lightning began to play and the 
thunder to grumble. And pretty soon there was a regular storm, 
and in the middle of it a man that was running aft stumbled 
and fell and sprained his ankle so that he had to laj'- up. This 
made the boys shake their heads. And every time the lightning 
come, there was that bar'l, with the blue lights winking around 
it. We was always on the lookout for it. But by and by, 
toward dawn, she was gone. When the day come we couldn't 
see her anywhere, and we warn't sorry, either. 

"But next night about half past nine, when there was songs 
and high jinks going on, here she comes a<?ain, and took her old 
roost on the stabboard side. There wam't no more high jinks. 
Everybody got solemn; nobody talked; you couldn't get anybody 
to do anything but set around moody and look at the bar'l. 
It begun to cloud up again. When the watch changed, the off 
watch stayed up, 'stead of tuming in. The storm ripped and 
roared around all night, and in the middle of it another man 
tripped and sprained his ankle, and had to knock off. The 
bar'l left toward day, and nobody see it go. 

"Everybody was sober and down in the mouth all day. I 

26 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

don't mean the kind of sober that comes of leaving liquor alone 
— not that. They was quiet, but they all drunk more than usual 
— not together, but each man sidled off and took it private, by 
himself. 

"After dark the off watch didn't turn in; nobody sung, nobody 
talked; the boys didn't scatter around, neither; they sort of 
huddled together, forrard; and for two hours they set there, 
perfectly still, looking steady in the one direction, and heaving a 
sigh once in a while. And then, here comes the bar'l again. 
She took up her old place. She stayed there all night; nobody 
turned in. The storm come on again, after midnight. It got 
awful dark; the rain poured down; hail, too; the thunder boomed 
and roared and bellowed; the wind blowed a hurricane; and the 
lightning spread over everything in big sheets of glare, and 
showed the whole raft as plain as day; and the river lashed up 
white as milk as far as you could see for miles, and there was 
that bar'l jiggering along, same as ever. The captain ordered 
the watch to man the after sweeps for a crossing, and nobody 
would go — no more sprained ankles for them, they said. They 
wouldn't even walk aft. Well, then, just then the sky split 
wide open, with a crash, and the lightning killed two men of 
the after watch, and crippled two more. Crippled them how, 
say you? Why, sprained their ankles! 

"The bar'l left in the dark betwixt lightnings, toward dawn. 
Well, not a body eat a bite at breakfast that morning. After 
that the men loafed around, in twos and threes, and talked low 
together. But none of them herded with Dick Allbright. They 
all give him the cold shake. If he come around where any of 
the men was, they split up and sidled away. They wouldn't man 
the sweeps with him. The captain had all the skiffs hauled up 
on the raft, alongside of his wigwam, and wouldn't let the dead 
men be took ashore to be planted; he didn't believe a man that 
got ashore would come back; and he was right. 

"After night come, you could see pretty plain that there was 
going to be trouble if that bar'l come again; there was such a 
muttering going on. A good many wanted to kill Dick All- 
bright, because he'd seen the bar'l on other trips, and that had 
an ugly look. Some wanted to put him ashore. Some said: 
* Let's all go ashore in a pile, if the bar'l comes again.' 

"This kind of whispers was still going on, the men being 
bunched together forrard watching for the bar'l, when lo and 

27 



MARK TWAIN 

behold you! here she comes again. Down she comes, slow and 
steady, and settles into her old tracks. You could 'a' heard a 
pin drop. Then up comes the captain, and says: 

'''Boys, don't be a pack of children and fools; I don't want 
this bar'l to be dogging us all the way to Orleans, and you don't: 
Well, then, how's the best way to stop it? Bum it up — that's 
the way. I'm going to fetch it aboard,' he says. And before 
anybody could say a word, in he went. 

" He swum to it, and as he come pushing it to the raft, the men 
spread to one side. But the old man got it aboard and busted 
in the head, and there was a baby in it! Yes, sir; a stark-naked 
baby. It was Dick Allbright's baby; he owned up and said so. 

"'Yes,' he says, a-leaning over it, 'yes, it is my own lamented 
darling, my poor lost Charles William Allbright deceased,' says 
he— for he could curl his tongue around the buUiest words in 
the language when he was a mind to, and lay them before you 
without a jint started anywheres. Yes, he said, he used to live 
up at the head of this bend, and one night he choked his child, 
which was crying, not intending to kill it — which was prob'ly 
a lie — and then he was scared, and buried it in a bar'l, before his 
wife got home, and off he went, and struck the northern trail 
and went to rafting; and this was the third year that the bar'l 
had chased him. He said the bad luck always begun light, and 
lasted till four men was killed, and then the bar'l didn't 
come any more after that. He said if the men would stand it 
one more night — and was a-going on Hke that — but the men 
had got enough. They started to get out a boat to take him 
ashore and lynch him, but he grabbed the little child all of a 
sudden and jumped overboard with it, hugged up to his breast 
and shedding tears, and we never see him again in this life, poor 
old suffering soul, nor Charles William neither." 

" Who was shedding tears? " says Bob; "was it Allbright or the 
baby?" 

"Why, Allbright, of course; didn't I tell you the baby was 
dead? Been dead three years — how could it cry?" 

"Well, never mind how it could cry — how could it keep all 
that time?" says Davy. "You answer me that." 

"I don't know how it done it," says Ed. "It done it, though 
— that's all I know about it." 

"Say— what did they do with the bar'l?" says the Child of 
Calamity. 

^8 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

"Why, they hove it overboard, and it sunk like a chunk of 
lead." 

"Edward, did the child look like it was choked?" sajrs one. 

"Did it have its hair parted?" says another. 

"What was the brand on that bar'l, Eddy?" says a fellow 
they called Bill. 

"Have you got the papers for them statistics, Edmund?" 
says Jimmy. 

"Say, Edwin, was you one of the men that was killed by the 
lightning?" says Davy. 

"Him? Oh, no! he was both of 'em," says Bob. Then they 
all haw-hawed. 

"Say, Edward, don't you reckon you'd better take a pill? 
You look bad — don't you feel pale?" says the Child of Calamity. 

"Oh, come, now, Eddy," says Jimmy, "show up; you must 
*a' kept part of that bar'l to prove the thing by. Show us the 
bung-hole — do — and we'll all beUeve you." 

"Say, boys," says Bill, "less divide it up. Thar's thirteen of 
us. I can swaller a thirteenth of the yam, if you can worry 
down the rest." 

Ed got up mad and said they could all go to some place which 
he ripped out pretty savage, and then walked off aft, cussing to 
himself, and they yelling and jeering at him, and roaring and 
laughing so you could hear them a mile. 

"Boys, we'll split a watermelon on that," says the Child of 
Calamity; and he came rummaging around in the dark amongst 
the shingle bundles where I was, and put his hand on me. I 
was warm and soft and naked; so he says "Ouch!" and jumped 
back. 

"Fetch a lantern or a chunk of fire here, boys — ^there's a snake 
here as big as a cow!" 

So they run there with a lantern, and crowded up and looked 
in on me. 

"Come out of that, you beggar!" says one. 

"Who are you?" says another. 

"What are you after here? Speak up prompt, or overboard 
you go." 

"Snake him out, boys. Snatch him out by the heels." 

I began to beg, and crept out amongst them trembUng. They 
looked me over, wondering, and the Child of Calamity says: 

" A cussed thief ! Lend a hand and less heave him overboard !" 

29 



MARK TWAIN 

"No," says Big Bob, "less get out the paint-pot and paint him 
a sky-blue all over from head to heel, and then heave him over." 

"Good! that's it. Go for the paint, Jimmy." 

When the paint come, and Bob took the brush and was just 
going to begin, the others laughing and rubbing their hands, I 
begun to cry, and that sort of worked on Davy, and he 
says: 

"'Vast there. He's nothing but a cub. I'll paint the man 
that teches him!" 

So I looked around on them, and some of them grumbled and 
growled, and Bob put down the paint, and the others didn't 
take it up. 

"Come here to the fire, and less see what you're up to here," 
says Davy. "Now set down there and give an account of 
yourself. How long have you been aboard here?" 

"Not over a quarter of a minute, sir," says I. 

"How did you get dry so quick?" 

"I don't know, sir. I'm always that way, mostly." 

"Oh, you are, are you? What's your name?" 

I wam't going to tell my name. I didn't know what to say, 
so I just says: 

"Charles William Allbright, sir." 

Then they roared — the whole crowd; and I was mighty glad 
I said that, because, maybe, laughing would get them in a 
better humor. 

When they got done laughing, Davy says: 

"It won't hardly do, Charles William. You couldn't have 
g>owed this much in five year, and you was a baby when you 
come out of the bar'l, you know, and dead at that. Come, now, 
tell a straight story, and nobody '11 hurt you, if you ain't up to 
anything wrong. What is your name?" 

"Aleck Hopkins, sir. Aleck James Hopkins." 

'•'Well, Aleck, where did you come from, here?" 

"From a trading-scow. She lays up the bend yonder. I was 
bom on her. Pap has traded up and down here all his^ife; and 
he told me to swim off here, because when you went by he said 
he would like to get some of you to speak to a Mr. Jonas Turner, 
in Cairo, and tell him — " 

"Oh, come!" 

"Yes, sir, it's as true as the world. Pap he says — " 

"Oh, your grandmother!'* 

30 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

They all laughed, and I tried again to talk, but they broke in 
on me and stopped me. 

"Now, looky-here," says Davy; "you're scared, and so you 
talk wild. Honest, now, do you live in a scow, or is it a lie?" 

"Yes, sir, in a trading-scow. She lays up at the head of the 
bend. But I wam't born in her. It's our first trip." 

"Now you're talking! What did you come aboard here 
for? To steal?" 

"No, sir, I didn't. It was only to get a ride on the raft. 
All boys does that." 

"Well, I know that. But what did you hide for?" 

"Sometimes they drive the boys off." 

"So they do. They might steal. Looky-here; if we let you 
off this time, will you keep out of these kind of scrapes here- 
after?" 

" 'Deed I will, boss. You try me." 

"All right, then. You ain't but little ways from shore. 
Overboard with you, and don't you make a fool of yourself 
another time this way. Blast it, boy, some raftsmen would 
rawhide you till you were black and blue!" 

I didn't wait to kiss good-by, but went overboard and broke 
for shore. When Jim come along by and by, the big raft was 
away out of sight around the point. I swum out and got aboard, 
and was mighty glad to see home again. 

The boy did not get the information he was after, 
but his adventure has furnished the glimpse of the 
departed raftsman and keelboatman which I desire 
to offer in this place. 

I now come to a phase of the Mississippi River life 
of the flush times of steamboating, which seems to me 
to warrant full examination — the marvelous science of 
piloting, as displayed there. I beHeve there has been 
nothing like it elsewhere in the world. 

31 



CHAPTER IV 

THE boys' ambition 

WHEN I was a boy, there was but one perma- 
nent ambition among my comrades in our 
village 1 on the west bank of the Mississippi River. 
That was, to be a steamboatman. We had transient 
ambitions of other sorts, but they were only transient. 
When a circus came and went, it left us all burning 
to become clowns ; the first negro minstrel show that 
ever came to our section left us all suffering to try 
that kind of life; now and then we had a hope that, 
if we lived and were good, God would permit us to 
be pirates. These ambitions faded out, each in its 
turn; but the ambition to be a steamboatman 
always remained. 

Once a day a cheap, gaudy packet arrived upward 
from St. Louis, and another downward from Keokuk. 
Before these events, the day was glorious with ex- 
pectancy; after them, the day was a dead and 
empty thing. Not only the boys, but the whole 
village, felt this. After all these years I can picture 
that old time to myself now, just as it was then : the 
white town drowsing in the sunshine of a summer's 
morning; the streets empty, or pretty nearly so; 
one or two clerks sitting in front of the Water Street 

1 Hannibal, Missouri. 
32 




WATER STREET CLERKS 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

stores, with their spHnt-bottomed chairs tilted back 
against the walls, chins on breasts, hats slouched over 
their faces, asleep — with shingle - shavings enough 
around to show what broke them down; a sow and 
a litter of pigs loafing along the sidewalk, doing a 
good business in watermelon rinds and seeds; two 
or three lonely little freight piles scattered about 
the *' levee"; a pile of *' skids" on the slope of the 
stone-paved wharf, and the fragrant town drunkard 
asleep in the shadow of them; two or three wood 
flats at the head of the wharf, but nobody to listen 
to the peaceful lapping of the wavelets against them ; 
the great Mississippi, the majestic, the magnifi- 
cent Mississippi, rolling its mile- wide tide along, 
shining in the sun; the dense forest away on the 
other side; the "point" above the town, and the 
** point " below, bounding the river-glimpse and turn- 
ing it into a sort of sea, and withal a very still and 
brilliant and lonely one. Presently a film of dark 
smoke appears above one of those remote ''points"; 
instantly a negro drayman, famous for his quick 
eye and prodigious voice, lifts up the cry, *'S-t-e-a-m- 
boat a-comin*l" and the scene changes! The town 
drunkard stirs, the clerks wake up, a furious clatter 
of drays follows, every house and store pours out a 
human contribution, and all in a twinkling the dead 
town is alive and moving. Drays, carts, men, boys, 
all go hurrying from many quarters to a common 
center, the wharf. Assembled there, the people 
fasten their eyes upon the coming boat as upon a 
wonder they are seeing for the first time. And the 
boat is rather a handsome sight, too. She is long 

33 



MARK TWAIN 

and sharp and trim and pretty; she has two tall, 
fancy- topped chimneys, with a gilded device of some 
kind swung between them; a fanciful pilot-house, 
all glass and ''gingerbread," perched on top qf the 
"texas" deck behind them; the paddle-boxes are 
gorgeous with a picture or with gilded rays above 
the boat's name; the boiler-deck, the hurricane-deck, 
and the texas deck are fenced and ornamented with 
clean white railings; there is a flag gallantly flying 
from the jack-staff; the furnace doors are open and 
the fires glaring bravely; the upper decks are black 
with passengers; the captain stands by the big bell, 
calm, imposing, the envy of all; great volumes of 
the blackest smoke are rolling and tumbling out of 
the chimneys — a husbanded grandeur created with 
a bit of pitch-pine just before arriving at a town; 
the crew are grouped on the forecastle; the broad 
stage is run far out over the port bow, and an envied 
deck-hand stands picturesquely on the end of it with 
a coil of rope in his hand ; the pent steam is scream- 
ing through the gauge-cocks; the captain lifts his 
hand, a bell rings, the wheels stop; then they turn 
back, churning the water to foam, and the steamer 
is at rest. Then such a scramble as there is to get 
aboard, and to get ashore, and to take in freight 
and to discharge freight, all at one and the same 
time; and such a yelling and cursing as the mates 
facilitate it all with ! Ten minutes later the steamer 
is under way again, with no flag on the jack-staff 
and no black smoke issuing from the chimneys. 
After ten more minutes the town is dead again, and 
the town drunkard asleep by the skids once more. 

34 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

My father was a justice of the peace, and I sup- 
posed he possessed the power of life and death over 
all men, and could hang anybody that offended ?iim. 
This was distinction enough for me as a general 
thing; but the desire to be a steamboatman kept 
intruding, nevertheless. I first wanted to be a 
cabin-boy, so that I could come out with a white 
apron on and shake a table-cloth over the side, 
where all my old comrades could see me; later I 
thought I would rather be the deck-hand who stood 
on the end of the stage-plank with the coil of rope 
in his hand, because he was particularly conspicuous. 
But these were only day-dreams — they were too 
heavenly to be contemplated as real possibilities. 
By and by one of our boys went away. He was not 
heard of for a long time. At last he turned up as 
apprentice engineer or "striker" on a steamboat. 
This thing shook the bottom out of all my Sunday- 
school teachings. That boy had been notoriously 
worldly, and I just the reverse; yet he was exalted 
to this eminence, and I left in obscurity and misery. 
There was nothing generous about this fellov/ in his 
greatness. He would always manage to have a 
rusty bolt to scrub while his boat tarried at our town, 
and he would sit on the inside guard and scrub it, 
where we all could see him and envy him and loathe 
him. And whenever his boat was laid up he would 
come home and swell around the town in his blackest 
and greasiest clothes, so that nobody could help re- 
membering that he was a steamboatman; and he 
used all sorts of steamboat technicalities in his talk, 
as if he were so used to them that he forgot common 

35 



MARK TWAIN 

people could not understand them. He would speak 
of the "labboard" side of a horse in an easy, natural 
way that would make one wish he was dead. And he 
was always talking about "St. Looy" like an old 
citizen; he would refer casually to occasions when 
he was "coming down Fourth Street," or when he 
was "passing by the Planter's House," or when there 
was a fire and he took a turn on the brakes of "the 
old Big Missouri " ; and then he would go on and lie 
about how many towns the size of ours were burned 
down there that day. Two or three of the boys had 
long been persons of consideration among us because 
they had been to St. Louis once and had a vague 
general knowledge of its wonders, but the day of 
their glory was over now. They lapsed into a 
humble silence, and learned to disappear when the 
ruthless "cub "-engineer approached. This fellow 
had money, too, and hair-oil. Also an ignorant 
silver watch and a showy brass watch-chain. He 
wore a leather belt and used no suspenders. If ever 
a youth was cordially admired and hated by his 
comrades, this one was. No girl could withstand 
his charms. He "cut out" every boy in the village. 
When his boat blew up at last, it diffused a tranquil 
contentment among us such as we had not known 
for months. But when he came home the next week, 
alive, renowned, and appeared in church all battered 
up and bandaged, a shining hero, stared at and won- 
dered over by everybody, it seemed to us that the 
partiality of Providence for an undeserving reptile 
had reached a point where it was open to criticism. 
This creature's career could produce but one result, 

36 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

and it speedily followed. Boy after boy managed to 
get on the river. The minister's son became an 
engineer. The doctor's and the postmaster's sons 
became ''mud clerks"; the wholesale liquor dealer's 
son became a barkeeper on a boat ; four sons of the 
chief merchant, and two sons of the county judge, 
became pilots. Pilot was the grandest position of 
all. The pilot, even in those days of trivial wages, 
had a princely salary — from a hundred and fifty to 
two hundred and fifty dollars a month, and no board 
to pay. Two months of his wages would pay a 
preacher's salary for a year. Now some of us were 
left disconsolate. We could not get on the river—- 
at least our parents would not let us. 

So, by and by, I ran away. I said I would never 
come home again till I was a pilot and could come in 
glory. But somehow I could not manage it. I went 
meekly aboard a few of the boats that lay packed 
together like sardines at the long St. Louis wharf, and 
humbly inquired for the pilots, but got only a cold 
shoulder and short words from mates and clerks, I 
had to make the best of this sort of treatment for the 
time being, but I had comforting da^^-dreams of a 
future when I should be a great and honored pilot, 
with plenty of money, and could kill some of these 
mates and clerks and pay for them. 



37 



CHAPTER V 

I WANT TO BE A CUB-PILOT 

MONTHS afterward the hope within me strug- 
gled to a reluctant death, and I found myself 
without an ambition. But I was ashamed to go 
home. I was in Cincinnati, and I set to work to map 
out a new career. I had been reading about the re- 
cent exploration of the river Amazon by an expedi- 
tion sent out by our government. It was said that 
the expedition, owing to difficulties, had not thor- 
oughly explored a part of the country lying about the 
headwaters, some four thousand miles from the 
mouth of the river. It was only about fifteen hun- 
dred miles from Cincinnati to New Orleans, where 
I could doubtless get a ship. I had thirty dollars 
left ; I would go and complete the exploration of the 
Amazon. This was all the thought I gave to the 
subject. I never was great in matters of detail. 
I packed my valise, and took passage on an ancient 
tub called the Paul Jones, for New Orleans. For 
the sum of sixteen dollars I had the scarred and 
tarnished splendors of *'her" main saloon prin- 
cipally to myself, for she was not a creature to 
attract the eye of wiser travelers. 

When we presently got under way and went poking 
down the broad Ohio, I became a new being, and the 

38 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

subject of my own admiration. I was a traveler ! A 
word never had tasted so good in my mouth before. 
I had an exultant sense of being bound for mysterious 
lands and distant climes which I never have felt in so 
uplifting a degree since. I was in such a glorified 
condition that all ignoble feelings departed out of 
me, and I was able to look down and pity the un- 
traveled with a compassion that had hardly a trace of 
contempt in it. Still, when we stopped at villages 
and wood-yards, I could not help lolling carelessly 
upon the railings of the boiler-deck to enjoy the 
envy of the country boys on the bank. If they did 
not seem to discover me, I presently sneezed to 
attract their attention, or moved to a position where 
they could not help seeing me. And as soon as I 
knew they saw me I gaped and stretched, and gave 
other signs of being mightily bored with traveling. 

I kept my hat off all the time, and stayed where the 
wind and the sun could strike me, because I wanted to 
get the bronzed and weather-beaten look of an old 
traveler. Before the second day was half gone I ex- 
perienced a joy which filled me with the purest grati- 
tude ; for I saw that the skin had begun to blister and 
peel off my face and neck. I wished that the boys 
and girls at home could see me nov/. 

We reached Louisville in time — at least the neigh- 
borhood of it. Vv^e stuck hard and fast on the rocks 
in the middle of the river, and lay there four days. I 
was now beginning to feel a strong sense of being 
a part of the boat's family, a sort of infant son to the 
captain and younger brother to the officers. There is 
no estimating the pride I took in this grandeur, or the 

39 



MARK TWAIN 

affection that began to swell and grow in me for those 
people. I could not know how the lordly steamboat- 
man scorns that sort of presumption in a mere lands- 
man. I particularly longed to acquire the least trifle 
of notice from the big stormy mate, and I was on the 
alert for an opportunity to do him a service to that 
end. It came at last. The riotous pow-wow of set- 
ting a spar was going on down on the forecastle, and 
I went down there and stood around in the way — or 
mostly skipping out of it — till the mate suddenly 
roared a general order for somebody to bring him a 
capstan bar. I sprang to his side and said: ''Tell 
me where it is — I'll fetch it!" 

If a rag-picker had offered to do a diplomatic ser- 
vice for the Emperor of Russia, the monarch could 
not have been more astounded than the mate was. 
He even stopped swearing. He stood and stared 
down at me. It took him ten seconds to scrape his 
disjointed remains together again. Then he said 

impressively: "Well, if this don't beat h 1!" and 

turned to his work with the air of a man who had 
been confronted with a problem too abstruse for 
solution. 

I crept away, and courted solitude for the rest of 
the day. I did not go to dinner ; I stayed away from 
supper until everybody else had finished. I did not 
feel so much like a member of the boat's family now 
as before. However, my spirits returned, in instal- 
ments, as we pursued our way down the river. I 
was sorry I hated the mate so, because it was not in 
(young) human nature not to admire him. He was 
huge and muscular, his face was bearded and whis- 

40 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

kered all over; he had a red woman and a blue 
woman tattooed on his right arm — one on each side 
of a blue anchor with a red rope to it; and in the 
matter of profanity he was sublime. When he was 
getting out cargo at a landing, I was always where I 
could see and hear. He felt all the majesty of his 
great position, and made the world feel it, too. 
When he gave even the simplest order, he discharged 
it like a blast of lightning, and sent a long, reverber- 
ating peal of profanity thundering after it. I could 
not help contrasting the way in which the average 
landsman would give an order with the mate's way 
of doing it. If the landsman should wish the gang- 
plank moved a foot farther forward, he would prob- 
ably say: ''James, or William, one of you push that 
plank forward, please"; but put the mate in his 
place, and he would roar out : * ' Here, now, start that 
gang-plank for'ard! Lively, now! What 're you 
about! Snatch it! snatch it! There! there! Aft 
again! aft again! Don't you hear me? Dash it to 
dash! are you going to sleep over it! 'Vast heaving. 
'Vast heaving, I tell you! Going to heave it clear 
astern? WHERE 're you going with that barrel! 
for'ard with it 'fore I make you swallow it, you 
dash-dsLsh-dsLsh-dashed split between a tired mud- 
turtle and a crippled hearse-horse!" 

I wished I could talk like that. 

When the soreness of my adventure with the mate 
had somewhat worn off, I began timidly to make up 
to the humblest official connected with the boat — the 
night watchman. He snubbed my advances at first, 
but I presently ventured to offer him a new chalk 

41 



MARK TWAIN 

pipe, and that softened him. So he allowed me to 
sit with him by the big bell on the hurricane-deck, 
and in time he melted into conversation. He could 
not well have helped it, I hung with such homage on 
his words and so plainly showed that I felt honored 
by his notice. He told me the names of dim capes 
and shadowy islands as we glided by them in the 
solemnity of the night, under the winking stars, and 
by and by got to talking about himself. He seemed 
over-sentimental for a man whose salary was six 
dollars a week — or rather he might have seemed so to 
an older person than I. But I drank in his words 
hungrily, and with a faith that might have moved 
mountains if it had been applied judiciously. What 
was it to me that he was soiled and seedy and 
fragrant with gin? What was it to me that his 
grammar was bad, his construction worse, and his 
profanity so void of art that it was an element of 
weakness rather than strength in his conversation? 
He was a wronged man, a man who had seen trouble, 
and that was enough for me. As he mellowed into 
his plaintive history his tears dripped upon the 
lantern in his lap, and I cried, too, from S3^mpathy. 
He said he was the son of an English nobleman — 
either an earl or an alderman, he could not remember 
which, but believed was both ; his father, the noble- 
man, loved him, but his mother hated him from the 
cradle; and so while he was still a little boy he was 
sent to "one of them old, ancient colleges" — he 
couldn't remember which ; and by and by his father 
died and his mother seized the property and "shook" 
him, as he phrased it. After his mother shook him, 

42 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

members of the nobility with whom he was ac- 
quainted used their influence to get him the position 
of "loblolly-boy in a ship " ; and from that point my 
watchman threw off all trammels of date and locaHty 
and branched out into a narrative that bristled all 
along with incredible adventures; a narrative that 
was so reeking with bloodshed, and so crammed with 
hair-breadth escapes and the most engaging and un- 
conscious personal villainies, that I sat speechless, en- 
joying, shuddering, wondering, worshiping. 

It was a sore blight to find out afterward that he 
was a low, vulgar, ignorant, sentimental, half- 
witted humbug, an untraveled native of the wilds of 
IlHnois, who had absorbed wildcat literature and 
appropriated its marvels, until in time he had 
woven odds and ends of the mess into this yarn, and 
then gone on telHng it to fledglings like me, until 
he had come to believe it himself. 



43 



CHAPTER VI 
A cub-pilot's experience 

WHAT with lying on the rocks four days at 
Louisville, and some other delays, the poor 
old Paul Jones fooled away about two weeks in mak- 
ing the voyage from Cincinnati to New Orleans. 
This gave me a chance to get acquainted with one of 
the pilots, and he taught m^ how to steer the boat, 
and thus made the fascination of river life more 
potent than ever for me. 

It also gave me a chance to get acquainted with a 
youth who had taken deck passage — more's the pity; 
for he easily borrowed six dollars of me on a promise 
to return to the boat and pay it back to me the day 
after we should arrive. But he probably died or for- 
got, for he never came. It was doubtless the former, 
since he had said his parents were wealthy, and he 
only traveled deck passage because it was cooler.^ 

I soon discovered two things. One was that a 
vessel would not be likely to sail for the mouth of the 
Amazon under ten or twelve years ; and the other was 
that the nine or ten dollars still left in my pocket 
would not suffice for so impossible an exploration as 
I had planned, even if I could afford to wait for a ship. 
Therefore it followed that I must contrive a new' 

**'Deck" passage — i. e., steerage passage. 
44 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

career. The Paul Jones was now bound for St. 
Louis. I planned a siege against my pilot, and at 
the end of three hard days he surrendered. He 
agreed to teach me the Mississippi River from New 
Orleans to St. Louis for five hundred dollars, payable 
out of the first wages I should receive after graduat- 
ing. I entered upon the small enterprise of ''learn- 
ing" twelve or thirteen hundred miles of the great 
Mississippi River with the easy confidence of my 
time of life. If I had really known what I was about 
to require of my faculties, I should not have had the 
courage to begin. I supposed that all a pilot had to 
do was to keep his boat in the river, and I did not 
consider that that could be much of a trick, since it 
was so wide. 

The boat backed out from New Orleans at four in 
the afternoon, and it was ''our watch" until eight. 
Mr. Bixby, my chief, "straightened her up," plowed 
her along past the stems of the other boats that lay 
at the Levee, and then said, "Here, take her; shave 
those steamships as close as you'd peel an apple." 
I took the wheel, and my heartbeat fluttered up into 
the hundreds; for it seemed to me that we were 
about to scrape the side off every ship in the line, 
we were so close. I held my breath and began to 
claw the boat away from the danger; and I had my 
own opinion of the pilot who had known no better 
than to get us into such peril, but I was too wise to 
express it. In half a minute I had a wide margin 
of safety intervening between the Paul Jones and the 
ships; and within ten seconds more I was set aside 
in disgrace, and Mr. Bixby was going into danger 

45 



MARK TWAIN 

again and flaying me alive with abuse of my coward- 
ice. I was stung, but I was obliged to admire the 
easy confidence with which my chief loafed from side 
to side of his wheel, and trimmed the ships so 
closely that disaster seemed ceaselessly imminent. 
When he had cooled a little he told me that the 
easy water was close ashore and the current outside, 
and therefore we must hug the bank, up-stream, to 
get the benefit of the former, and stay well out, 
down-stream, to take advantage of the latter. In 
my own mind I resolved to be a down-stream pilot 
and leave the up-streaming to people dead to prudence. 

Now and then Mr. Bixby called my attention to 
certain things. Said he, ''This is Six-Mile Point." 
I assented. It was pleasant enough information, but 
I could not see the bearing of it. I was not conscious 
that it was a matter of any interest to me. Another 
time he said, "This is Nine-Mile Point." Later he 
said, "This is Twelve-Mile Point." They were all 
about level with the water's edge; they all looked 
about alike to me; they were monotonously unpic- 
turesque. I hoped Mr. Bixby would change the sub- 
ject. But no; he would crowd up around a point, 
hugging the shore with affection, and then say: 
"The slack water ends here, abreast this bunch of 
China trees; now we cross over." So he crossed 
over. He gave me the wheel once or twice, but I 
had no luck. I either came near chipping off the 
edge of a sugar-plantation, or I yawed too far from 
shore, and so dropped back into disgrace again and 
got abused. 

The watch was ended at last, and we took supper 

46 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

and went to bed. At midnight the glare of a lantern 
shone in my eyes, and the night watchman said : 

**Come, turn out!" 

And then he left. I could not understand this 
extraordinary procedure ; so I presently gave up try- 
ing to, and dozed off to sleep. Pretty soon the 
watchman was back again, and this time he was 
gruff. I was annoyed. I said: 

"What do you want to come bothering around 
here in the middle of the night for ? Now, as like as 
not, I'll not get to sleep again to-night." 

The watchman said : 

"Well, if this ain't good, I'm blessed." 

The "off- watch" was just turning in, and I heard 
some brutal laughter from them, and such remarks 
as "Hello, watchman! ain't the new cub turned 
out yet? He's delicate, likely. Give him some 
sugar in a rag, and send for the chambermaid to sing 
'Rock-a-by Baby,' to him." 

About this time Mr. Bixby appeared on the scene. 
Something like a minute later I was climbing the 
pilot-house steps with some of my clothes on and the 
rest in my arms. Mr. Bixby was close behind, com- 
menting. Here was something fresh — this thing of 
getting up in the middle of the night to go to work. 
It was a detail in piloting that had never occurred to 
me at all. I knew that boats ran all night, but some- 
how I had never happened to reflect that somebody 
had to get up out of a warm bed to run them. I 
began to fear that piloting was not quite so romantic 
as I had imagined it was; there was something very 
real and workHke about this new phase of it. 

47 



MARK TWAIN 

It was a rather dingy night, although a fair num- 
ber of stars were out. The big mate was at the 
wheel, and he had the old tub pointed at a star and 
was holding her straight up the middle of the river. 
The shores on either hand were not much more than 
half a mile apart, but they seemed wonderfully far 
away and ever so vague and indistinct. The mate 
said: 

"We've got to land at Jones's plantation, sir." 

The vengeful spirit in me exulted. I said to my- 
self, "I wish you joy of your job, Mr. Bixby; you'll 
have a good time finding Mr. Jones's plantation such 
a night as this ; and I hope you never will find it as 
long as you live." 

Mr. Bixby said to the mate : 
\ ** Upper end of the plantation, or the lower?" 

*' Upper." 

**I can't do it. The stumps there are out of 
water at this stage. It's no great distance to the 
lower, and you'll have to get along with that." 

"All right, sir. If Jones don't like it, he'll have to 
lump it, I reckon." 

And then the mate left. My exultation began to 
cool and my wonder to come up. Here was a m:n 
who not only proposed to find this plantation on such 
a night, but to find either end of it you preferred. I 
dreadfully wanted to ask a question, but I v/as 
carrying about as many short answers as my cargo- 
room would admit of, so I held my peace. All I 
desired to ask Mr. Bixby was the simple question 
whether he was ass enough to really imagine he was 
going to find that plantation on a night when all 

48 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

plantations were exactly alike and all of the same 
color. But I held in. I used to have fine inspira- 
tions of prudence in those days. 

Mr. Bixby made for the shore and soon was scrap- 
ing it, just the same as if it had been daylight. 
And not only that, but singing: 

"Father in heaven, the day is declining," etc. 

It seemed to me that I had put my life in the keep- 
ing of a peculiarly reckless outcast. Presently he 
turned on me and said: 

"What's the name of the first point above New 
Orleans?" 

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and 
I did. I said I didn't know. 

** Don't knowr' 

This manner jolted me. I was down at the foot 
again, in a moment. But I had to say just what 
I had said before. 

"Well, you're a smart one!" said Mr. Bixby. 
"What's the name of the next point?" 

Once more I didn't know. 

"Well, this beats anything. Tell me the name of 
any point or place I told you.'* 

I studied awhile and decided that I couldn't. 

"Look here! What do you start out from, above 
Twelve-Mile Point, to cross over?" 

"I— I— don't know." 

"You — you — don't know?" mimicking my drawl- 
ing manner of speech. "What do you know?" 

"I — I — nothing, for certain." 

"By the great Caesar's ghost, I believe you! 

49 



MARK TWAIN 

You're the stupidest dunderhead I ever saw or ever 
heard of, so help me Moses ! The idea of you being a 
pilot — you! Why, you don't know enough to pilot 
a cow down a lane." 

Oh, but his wrath was up ! He was a nervous man, 
and he shuffled from one side of his wheel to the other 
as if the floor was hot. He would boil awhile to him- 
self, and then overflow and scald me again. 

* ' Look here ! What do you suppose I told you the 
names of those points for?" 

I tremblingly considered a moment, and then the 
devil of temptation provoked me to say: 

"Well to — to — be entertaining, I thought." 

This was a red rag to the bull. He raged and 
stormed so (he was crossing the river at the time) 
that I judged it made him blind, because he ran over 
the steering-oar of a trading-scow. Of course the 
traders sent up a volley of red-hot profanity. Never 
was a man so grateful as Mr. Bixby was ; because he 
was brimful, and here were subjects who could talk 
hack. He threw open a window, thrust his head out, 
and such an irruption followed as I never had heard 
before. The fainter and farther away the scowmen's 
curses drifted, the higher Mr. Bixby lifted his voice 
and the weightier his adjectives grew. When he 
closed the window he was empty. You could have 
drawn a seine through his system and not caught 
curses enough to disturb your mother with. Pres- 
ently he said to me in the gentlest way: 

"My boy, you must get a little memorandum- 
book; and every time I tell you a thing, put it down 
right away. There's only one way to be a pilot, and 

50 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

that is to get this entire river by heart. You have 
to know it just like ABC." 

That was a dismal revelation to me; for my 
memory was never loaded with anything but blank 
cartridges. However, I did not feel discouraged 
long. I judged that it was best to make some allow- 
ances, for doubtless Mr. Bixby was ''stretching.'* 
Presently he pulled a rope and struck a few strokes 
on the big bell. The stars were all gone now, and 
the night was as black as ink. I could hear the 
wheels chum along the bank, but I was not entirely 
certain that I could see the shore. The voice of the 
invisible watchman called up from the hurricane- 
deck: 

"What's this, sir?" 

"Jones's plantation." 

I said to myself, * ' I wish I might venture to offer a 
small bet that it isn't." But I did not chirp. I only 
waited to see. Mr. Bixby handled the engine-bells, 
and in due time the boat's nose came to the land, a 
torch glowed from the forecastle, a man skipped 
ashore, a darky's voice on the bank said: "Gimme 
de k'yarpet-bag. Mass' Jones," and the next moment 
we were standing up the river again, all serene. I re- 
flected deeply awhile, and then said — but not aloud 
— "Well, the finding of that plantation was the 
luckiest accident that ever happened ; but it couldn't 
happen again in a hundred years." And I fully be- 
lieved it was an accident, too. 

By the time we had gone seven or eight hundred 
miles up the river, I had learned to be a tolerably 
plucky up-stream steersman, in daylight ; and before 

51 



MARK TWAIN 

we reached St. Louis I had made a trifle of progress 
in night work, but only a trifle. I had a note-book 
that f airiy bristled with the names of towns, * ' points, ' ' 
bars, islands, bends, reaches, etc. ; but the informa- 
tion was to be found only in the note-book — none of 
it was in my head. It made my heart ache to think 
I had only got half of the river set down; for as our 
watch was four hours off and four hours on, day and 
night, there was a long four-hour gap in my book for 
every time I had slept since the voyage began. 

My chief was presently hired to go on a big New 
Orleans boat, and I packed my satchel and went with 
him. She was a grand affair. When I stood in her 
pilot-house I was so far above the water that I 
seemed perched on a mountain; and her decks 
stretched so far away, fore and aft, below me, that 
I wondered how I could ever have considered the 
little Paul Jones a large craft. There were other 
differences, too. The Paul Jones's pilot-house was 
a cheap, dingy, battered rattletrap, cramped for 
room; but here was a sumptuous glass temple; 
room enough to have a dance in ; showy red and gold 
window-curtains ; an imposing sofa ; leather cushions 
and a back to the high bench where visiting pilots 
sit, to spin yarns and "look at the river"; bright, 
fanciful ''cuspidores," instead of a broad wooden 
box filled with sawdust; nice new oilcloth on the 
floor; a hospitable big stove for winter; a wheel as 
high as my head, costly with inlaid work; a wire 
tiller-rope; bright brass knobs for the bells; and 
a tidy, white-aproned, black "texas-tender," to 
bring up tarts and ices and coffee during mid-watch, 

52 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

day and night. Now this was "something Hke"; 
and so I began to take heart once more to beHeve 
that piloting was a romantic sort of occupation after 
all. The moment we were under way I began to 
prowl about the great steamer and fill myself with 
joy. She was as clean and as dainty as a drawing- 
room; when I looked down her long, gilded saloon, 
it was like gazing through a splendid tunnel; she 
had an oil-picture, by some gifted sign-painter, 
on every stateroom door; she glittered with no end 
of prism-fringed chandeliers; the clerk's office was 
elegant, the bar was marvelous, and the barkeeper 
had been barbered and upholstered at incredible 
cost. The boiler-deck {i. e., the second story of the 
boat, so to speak) was as spacious as a church, it 
seemed to me; so with the forecastle; and there 
was no pitiful handful of deck-hands, firemen, and 
roustabouts down there, but a whole battalion of 
men. The fires were fiercely glaring from a long 
row of furnaces, and over them were eight huge 
boilers! This was unutterable pomp. The mighty 
engines — but enough of this. I had never felt so 
fine before. And when I found that the regiment 
of natty servants respectfully **sir'd" me, my 
satisfaction was complete. 



53 



CHAPTER VII 

A DARING DEED 

WHEN I returned to the pilot-house St. Lotiis 
was gone, and I was lost. Here was a piece 
of river which was all down in my book, but I 
could make neither head nor tail of it: you under- 
stand, it was turned around. I had seen it when 
coming up-stream, but I had never faced about to 
see how it looked when it was behind me. My heart 
broke again, for it was plain that I had got to learn 
this troublesome river both ways. 

The pilot-house was full of pilots, going down to 
"look at the river." What is called the ''upper 
river" (the two hundred miles between St. Louis 
and Cairo, where the Ohio comes in) was low; and 
the Mississippi changes its channel so constantly that 
the pilots used to always find it necessary to run 
down to Cairo to take a fresh look, when their boats 
were to lie in port a week; that is, when the water 
was at a low stage. A deal of this "looking at the 
river" was done by poor fellows who seldom had 
a berth, and whose only hope of getting one lay in 
their being always freshly posted and therefore 
ready to drop into the shoes of some reputable 
pilot, for a single trip, on account of such pilot's 
sudden illness, or some other necessity. And a good 

54 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

many of them constantly ran up and down inspect- 
ing the river, not because they ever really hoped to 
get a berth, but because (they being guests of the 
boat) it was cheaper to ''look at the river" than 
stay ashore and pay board. In time these fellows 
grew dainty in their tastes, and only infested boats 
that had an established reputation for setting good 
tables. All visiting pilots were useful, for they were 
always ready and willing, winter or summer, night 
or day, to go out in the yawl and help buoy the 
channel or assist the boat's pilots in any way they 
could. They were Hkewise welcomed because all 
pilots are tireless talkers, when gathered together, 
and as they talk only about the river they are always 
understood and are always interesting. Your true 
pilot cares nothing about anything on earth but the 
river, and his pride in his occupation surpasses the 
pride of kings. 

We had a fine company of these river inspectors 
along this trip. There were eight or ten, and there 
was abundance of room for them in our great pilot- 
house. Two or three of them wore polished silk 
hats, elaborate shirt-fronts, diamond breastpins, kid 
gloves, and patent-leather boots. They were choice 
in their English, and bore themselves with a dignity 
proper to men of solid means and prodigious reputa- 
tion as pilots. The others were more or less loosely 
clad, and wore upon their heads tall felt cones that 
were suggestive of the days of the Commonwealth. 

I was a cipher in this august company, and felt 
subdued, not to say torpid. I was not even of 
sufficient consequence to assist at the wheel when it 

55 



MARK TWAIN 

was necessary to put the tiller hard down in a hurry; 
the guest that stood nearest did that when occasion 
required — and this was pretty much all the time, be- 
cause of the crookedness of the channel and the scant 
water. I stood in a corner ; and the talk I listened to 
took the hope all out of me. One visitor said to 
another : 

"Jim, how did you run Plum Point, coming up?'* 

"It was in the night, there, and I ran it the way 
one of the boys on the Diana told me; started out 
about fifty yards above the wood-pile on the false 
point, and held on the cabin under Plum Point till 
I raised the reef — quarter less twain — then straight- 
ened up for the middle bar till I got well abreast the 
old one-limbed cotton wood in the bend, then got 
my stern on the cottonwood, and head on the low 
place above the point, and came through a-booming 
— nine and a half." 

"Pretty square crossing, an't it?" 

"Yes, but the upper bar's working down fast." 

Another pilot spoke up and said: 

"I had better water than that, and ran it lower 
down; started out from the false point — mark twain 
— ^raised the second reef abreast the big snag in the 
bend, and had quarter less twain." 

One of the gorgeous ones remarked: 

"I don't want to find fault with your leadsmen, 
but that's a good deal of water for Plum Point, it 
seems to me." 

There was an approving nod all around as this 
quiet snub dropped on the boaster and "settled" 
him. And so they went on talk-talk-talking. Mean- 

.'56 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

time, the thing that was running in my mind was, 
' * Now, if my ears hear aright, I have not only to get 
the names of all the towns and islands and bends, and 
so on, by heart, but I must even get up a warm 
personal acquaintanceship with every old snag and 
one -limbed cot ton wood and obscure wood-pile that 
ornaments the banks of this river for twelve hundred 
miles; and more than that, I must actually know 
where these things are in the dark, unless these 
guests are gifted with eyes that can pierce through 
two miles of solid blackness. I wish the piloting 
business was in Jericho and I had never thought of it." 

At dusk Mr. Bixby tapped the big bell three times 
(the signal to land), and the captain emerged from 
his drawing-room in the forward end of the "texas," 
and looked up inquiringly. Mr. Bixby said : 

"We will lay up here all night, captain." 

"Very well, sir." 

That was all. The boat came to shore and was tied 
up for the night. It seemed to me a fine thing that 
the pilot could do as he pleased, without asking so 
grand a captain's permission. I took my supper 
and went immediately to bed, discouraged by my 
day's observations and experiences. My late voy- 
age's note-booking was but a confusion of meaning- 
less names. It had tangled me all up in a knot every 
time I had looked at it in the daytime. I now hoped 
for respite in sleep ; but no, it reveled all through my 
head till sunrise again, a frantic and tireless night- 
mare. 

Next morning I felt pretty rusty and low-spirited. 
We went booming along, taking a good many 

57 



MARK TWAIN 

chances, for we were anxious to * * get out of the river ** 
(as getting out to Cairo was called) before night 
should overtake us. But Mr. Bixby's partner, the 
other pilot, presently grounded the boat, and we lost 
so much time getting her off that it was plain the 
darkness would overtake us a good long way above 
the mouth. This was a great misfortune, especially 
to certain of our visiting pilots, whose boats would 
have to wait for their return, no matter how long that 
might be. It sobered the pilot-house talk a good 
deal. Coming up-stream, pilots did not mind low 
water or any kind of darkness; nothing stopped them 
but fog. But down-stream work was different; a 
boat was too nearly helpless, with a stiff current 
pushing behind her; so it was not customary to run 
down-stream at night in low water. 

There seemed to be one small hope, however : if we 
could get through the intricate and dangerous Hat 
Island crossing before night, we could venture the 
rest, for we would have plainer sailing and better 
water. But it would be insanity to attempt Hat 
Island at night. So there was a deal of looking at 
watches all the rest of the day, and a constant 
ciphering upon the speed we were making; Hat 
Island was the eternal subject; sometimes hope was 
high and sometimes we were delayed in a bad 
crossing, and down it went again. For hours all 
hands lay under the burden of this suppressed excite- 
ment ; it was even communicated to me, and I got to 
feeling so solicitous about Hat Island, and under such 
an awful pressure of responsibility, that I wished I 
might have five minutes on shore to draw a good, full, 

S8 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

relieving breath, and start over again. We were 
standing no regular watches. Each of our pilots ran 
such portions of the river as he had run when coming 
up-stream, because of his greater familiarity with it ; 
but both remained in the pilot-house constantly. 

An hour before sunset Mr. Bixby took the wheel, 
and Mr. W. stepped aside. For the next thirty min- 
utes every man held his watch in his hand and was 
restless, silent, and uneasy. At last somebody said, 
with a doomful sigh: 

' * Well, yonder 's Hat Island — and we can't make it . ' * 

All the watches closed with a snap, everybody 
sighed and muttered something about its being ''too 
bad, too bad — ah, if we could only have got here 
half an hour sooner!" and the place was thick with 
the atmosphere of disappointment. Some started to 
go out, but loitered, hearing no bell-tap to land. The 
sun dipped behind the horizon, the boat went on. 
Inquiring looks passed from one guest to another; 
and one who had his hand on the door-knob and had 
turned it, waited, then presently took away his hand 
and let the knob turn back again. We bore steadily 
down the bend. More looks were exchanged, and 
nods of surprised admiration — but no words. In- 
sensibly the men drew together behind Mr. Bixby, as 
the sky darkened and one or two dim stars came out. 
The dead silence and sense of waiting became op- 
pressive. Mr. Bixby pulled the cord, and two deep, 
mellow notes from the big bell floated off on the night. 
Then a pause, and one more note was struck. The 
watchman's voice followed, from the hurricane-deck : 

' ' Labboard lead, there ! Stabboard lead !" 

59 



MARK TWAIN 

The cries of the leadsmen began to rise out of the 
distance, and were gruffly repeated by the word- 
passers on the hurricane-deck. 

*'M-a-r-k three! M-a-r-k three! Quarter-less- 
three ! Half twain ! Quarter twain ! M-a-r-k twain ! 
Quarter-less — " 

Mr. Bixby pulled two bell-ropes, and was answered 
by faint jinglings far below in the engine-room, and 
our speed slackened. The steam began to whistle 
through the gauge-cocks. The cries of the leadsmen 
went on — and it is a weird sound, always, in the 
night. Every pilot in the lot was watching now, 
with fixed eyes, and talking under his breath. No- 
body was calm and easy but Mr. Bixby. He would 
put his wheel down and stand on a spoke, and as the 
steamer swung into her (to me) utterly invisible 
marks — for we seemed to be in the midst of a wide 
and gloomy sea — he would meet and fasten her there. 
Out of the murmur of half -audible talk, one caught a 
coherent sentence now and then — such as : 

"There; she's over the first reef all right!" 

After a pause, another subdued voice : 

"Her stern's coming down just exactly right, by 
George!" 

"Now she's in the marks; over she goes!** 

Somebody else muttered: 

"Oh, it was done beautiful — beautifulF* 

Now the engines were stopped altogether, and we 
drifted with the current. Not that I could see the 
boat drift, for I could not, the stars being all gone 
by this time. This drifting was the dismalest work; 
it held one's heart still. Presently I discovered a 

60 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

blacker gloom than that which surrounded us. It 
was the head of the island. We were closing right 
down upon it. We entered its deeper shadow, and 
so imminent seemed the peril that I was likely to 
suffocate; and I had the strongest impulse to do 
something, anything, to save the vessel. But still 
Mr. Bixby stood by his wheel, silent, intent as a cat, 
and all the pilots stood shoulder to shoulder at his 
back. 

'* She'll not make it!" somebody whispered. 

The water grew shoaler and shoaler, by the leads- 
man's cries, till it was down to : 

"Eight-and-a-half! E-i-g-h-t feet! E-i-g-h-t feet! 
Seven-and — " 

Mr. Bixby said wamingly through his speaking- 
tube to the engineer: 

"Standby, now!" 

"Ay, ay, sir!" 

"Seven-and-a-half! Seven feet! 5i^-and — " 

We touched bottom! Instantly Mr. Bixby set a 
lot of bells ringing, shouted through the tube, ''Now, 
let her have it — every ounce you've got !" then to his 
partner, "Put her hard down! snatch her! snatch 
her!" The boat rasped and ground her way through 
the sand, hung upon the apex of disaster a single 
tremendous instant, and then over she went! And 
such a shout as went up at Mr. Bixby's back never 
loosened the roof of a pilot-house before! 

There was no more trouble after that. Mr. Bixby 
was a hero that night; and it was some little time, 
too, before his exploit ceased to be talked about by 
river-men. 

6i 



MARK TWAIN 

Fully to realize the marvelous precision required in 
laying the great steamer in her marks in that murky 
waste of water, one should know that not only must 
she pick her intricate way through snags and blind 
reefs, and then shave the head of the island so closely 
as to brush the overhanging foliage with her stem, 
but at one place she must pass almost within arm's 
reach of a sunken and invisible wreck that would 
snatch the hull timbers from under her if she should 
strike it, and destroy a quarter of a million dollars* 
worth of steamboat and cargo in five minutes, and 
maybe a hundred and fifty human lives into the 
bargain. 

The last remark I heard that night was a compli- 
ment to Mr. Bixby, uttered in soliloquy and with 
unction by one of our guests. He said: 

''By the Shadow of Death, but he's a lightning 
pilot!" 

62 



CHAPTER VIII 

PERPLEXING LESSONS 

AT the end of what seemed a tedious while, I had 
£\ managed to pack my head full of islands, towns, 
bars, "points," and bends; and a curiously inanimate 
mass of lumber it was, too. However, inasmuch as I 
could shut my eyes and reel off a good long string of 
these names without leaving out more than ten miles 
of river in every fifty, I began to feel that I could 
take a boat down to New Orleans if I could make 
her skip those little gaps. But of course my com- 
placency could hardly get start enough to lift my 
nose a trifle into the air, before Mr. Bixby would 
think of something to fetch it down again. One day 
he turned on me suddenly with this settler: 

"What is the shape of Walnut Bend?" 

He might as well have asked me my grandmother's 
opinion of protoplasm. I reflected respectfully, and 
then said I didn't know it had any particular shape. 
My gun-powdery chief went off with a bang, of 
course, and then went on loading and firing until he 
was out of adjectives. 

I had learned long ago that he only carried just so 
many rounds of ammunition, and was sure to subside 
into a very placable and even remorseful old smooth- 
bore as soon as they were all gone. That word 

63 



MARK TWAIN 

*'old" is merely affectionate; he was not more than 
thirty-four. I waited. By and by he said : 

"My boy, you've got to know the shape of the 
river perfectly. It is all there is left to steer by on a 
very dark night. Everything else is blotted out and 
gone. But mind you, it hasn't the same shape in the 
night that it has in the daytime." 

"How on earth am I ever going to learn it, then?" 

"How do you follow a hall at home in the dark? 
Because you know the shape of it. You can't see it . " 

"Do you mean to say that I've got to know all 
the million trifling variations of shape in the banks 
of this interminable river as well as I know the shape 
of the front hall at home ?" 

"On my honor, you've got to know them better 
than any man ever did know the shapes of the halls 
in his own house." 

"I wish I was dead!" 

"Now I don't want to discourage you, but — " 

"Well, pile it on me; I might as well have it now 
as another time." 

"You see, this has got to be learned; there isn't 
any getting around it. A clear starlight night throws 
such heavy shadows that, if you didn't know the 
shape of a shore perfectly, you would claw away 
from every bunch of timber, because you would take 
the black shadow of it for a solid cape; and you see 
you would be getting scared to death every fifteen 
minutes by the watch. You would be fifty yards 
from shore all the time when you ought to be within 
fifty feet of it. You can't see a snag in one of those 
shadows, but you know exactly where it is, and the 

64 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

shape of the river tells you when you are coming to 
it. Then there's your pitch-dark night ; the river is 
a very different shape on a pitch-dark night from 
what it is on a star-light night. All shores seem to 
be straight lines, then, and mighty dim ones, too; 
and you'd run them for straight lines, only you know 
better. You boldly drive your boat right into what 
seems to be a solid, straight wall (you knowing very 
well that in reality there is a curve there), and that 
wall falls back and makes way for you. Then there's 
your gray mist. You take a night when there's one 
of these grisly, drizzly, gray mists, and then there 
isn't any particular shape to a shore. A gray mist 
would tangle the head of the oldest man that ever 
lived. Well, then, different kinds of moonlight change 
the shape of the river in different ways. You see — " 

"Oh, don't say any more, please! Have I got to 
learn the shape of the river according to all these 
five hundred thousand different ways ? If I tried to 
carry all that cargo in my head it would make me 
stoop-shouldered.'* 

''No! you only learn the shape of the river; and 
you learn it with such absolute certainty that you 
can always steer by the shape that's in your head, 
and never mind the one that's before your eyes." 

''Very well, I'll try it; but, after I have learned 
it, can I depend on it? Will it keep the same form 
and not go fooling around?" 

Before Mr. Bixby could answer, Mr. W. came in 
to take the watch, and he said: 

"Bixby, you'll have to look out for President's 
Island, and all that country clear away up above the 

65 



MARK TWAIN 

Old Hen and Chickens. The banks are caving and 
the shape of the shores changing Hke everything. 
Why, you wouldn't know the point above 40. You 
can go up inside the old sycamore snag, now."^ 

So that question was answered. Here were leagues 
of shore changing shape. My spirits were down in 
the mud again. Two things seemed pretty apparent 
to me. One was, that in order to be a pilot a man 
had got to learn more than any one man ought to 
be allowed to know; and the other was, that he 
must learn it all over again in a different way every 
twenty-four hours. 

That night we had the watch imtil twelve. Now 
it was an ancient river custom for the two pilots to 
chat a bit when the watch changed. While the 
relieving pilot put on his gloves and lit his cigar, his 
partner, the retiring pilot, would say something like 
this: 

''I judge the upper bar is making down a little 
at Hale's Point; had quarter twain with the lower 
lead and mark twain ^ with the other." 

''Yes, I thought it was making down a little, last 
trip. Meet any boats?" 

"Met one abreast the head of 21, but she was 
away over hugging the bar, and I couldn't make her 
out entirely. I took her for the Sunny South — 
hadn't any skyHghts forward of the chimneys." 

And so on. And as the relieving pilot took the 



*It may not be necessary, but still it can do no harm to explain that 
"inside" means between the snag and the shore. — M. T. 

-Two fathoms. Quarter twain is 2>^ fathoms, I3>^ feet. Mark 
three is three fathoms. 

66 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

wheel his partner^ would mention that we were in 
such-and-such a bend, and say we were abreast of 
such-and-such a man's woodyard or plantation. This 
was courtesy; I supposed it was necessity. But Mr. 
W. came on watch full twelve minutes late on this 
particular night — a tremendous breach of etiquette; 
in fact, it is the unpardonable sin among pilots. 
So Mr. Bixby gave him no greeting whatever, but 
simply surrendered the wheel and marched out of 
the pilot-house without a word. I was appalled; it 
was a villainous night for blackness, we were in a 
particularly wide and blind part of the river, where 
there was no shape or substance to anything, and it 
seemed incredible that Mr. Bixby should have left 
that poor fellow to kill the boat, trying to find out 
where he was. But I resolved that I would stand 
by him anyway. He should find that he was not 
wholly friendless. So I stood around, and waited to 
be asked where we were. But Mr. W. plunged on 
serenely through the solid firmament of black cats 
that stood for an atmosphere, and never opened his 
mouth. ''Here is a proud devil!" thought I; ''here 
is a limb of Satan that would rather send us all to 
destruction than put himself under obligations to me, 
because I am not yet one of the salt of the earth 
and privileged to snub captains and lord it over 
everything dead and alive in a steamboat." I pres- 
ently climbed up on the bench ; I did not think it was 
safe to go to sleep while this lunatic was on watch. 
However, I must have gone to sleep in the course 
of time, because the next thing I was aware of was 
1" Partner" is technical for "the other pilot." 

67 



MARK TWAIN 

the fact that day was breaking, Mr. W. gone, and 
Mr. Bixby at the wheel again. So it was four 
o'clock and all well — but me; I felt like a skinful 
of dry bones, and all of them trying to ache at 
once. 

Mr. Bixby asked me what I had stayed up there 
for. I confessed that it was to do Mr. W. a benevo- 
lence — tell him where he was. It took five minutes 
for the entire preposterousness of the thing to filter 
into Mr. Bixby's system, and then I judge it filled him 
nearly up to the chin; because he paid me a com- 
pliment — and not much of a one either. He said: 

"Well, taking you by and large, you do seem to 
be more different kinds of an ass than any creature 
I ever saw before. What did you suppose he wanted 
to know for?" 

I said I thought it might be a convenience to him. 

''Convenience! D nation! Didn't I tell you 

that a man's got to know the river in the night the 
same as he'd know his own front hall?" 

"Well; I can follow the front hall in the dark 
if I know it is the front hall ; but suppose you set me 
down in the middle of it in the dark and not tell 
me which hall it is; hov/ am I to know?" 

"Well, you've got to, on the river!" 

"All right. Then I'm glad I never said anything 
to Mr. W." 

"I should say so! Why, he'd have slammed you 
through the window and utterly ruined a hundred 
dollars' worth of window-sash and stuft\" 

I was glad this damage had been saved, for it 
would have made me unpopular with the owners. 

68 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

They always hated anybody who had the name of 
being careless and injuring things. 

I went to wori<: now to learn the shape of the 
river; and of all the eluding and ungraspable objects 
that ever I tried to get mind or hands on, that was 
the chief. I would fasten my eyes upon a sharp, 
wooded point that projected far into the river some 
miles ahead of me, and go to laboriously photo- 
graphing its shape upon my brain ; and just as I was 
beginning to succeed to my satisfaction, we would 
draw up toward it and the exasperating thing would 
begin to melt away and fold back into the bank ! If 
there had been a conspicuous dead tree standing 
upon the very point of the cape, I would find that 
tree inconspicuously merged into the general forest, 
and occupying the middle of a straight shore, when 
I got abreast of it! No prominent hill would stick 
to its shape long enough for me to make up my 
mind what its form really was, but it was as dis- 
solving and changeful as if it had been a mountain 
of butter in the hottest comer of the tropics. Noth- 
ing ever had the same shape when I was coming 
down-stream that it had borne when I went up. I 
mentioned these little difficulties to Mr. Bixby. He 
said : 

"That's the very main virtue of the thing. If the 
shapes didn't change every three seconds they 
wouldn't be of any use. Take this place where we 
are now, for instance. As long as that hill over 
yonder is only one hill, I can boom right along the 
way I'm going; but the moment it splits at the top 
and forms a V, I know I've got to scratch to star- 

69 



MARK TWAIN 

board in a hurry, or I'll bang this boat's brains out 
against a rock; and then the moment one of the 
prongs of the V swings behind the other, I've got 
to waltz to larboard again, or I'll have a misunder- 
standing with a snag that would snatch the keelson 
out of this steamboat as neatly as if it were a sliver 
in your hand. If that hill didn't change its shape 
on bad nights there would be an awful steamboat 
graveyard around here inside of a year." 

It was plain that I had got to learn the shape of 
the river in all the different ways that could be 
thought of — ^upside down, wrong end first, inside out, 
fore-and-aft, and ' ' thort-ships " — and then know 
what to do on gray nights when it hadn't any shape 
at all. So I set about it. In the course of time I 
began to get the best of this knotty lesson, and my 
self-complacency moved to the front once more. Mr. 
Bixby was all fixed, and ready to start it to the rear 
again. He opened on me after this fashion: 

"How much water did we have in the middle 
crossing at Hole-in- the- Wall, trip before last?" 

I considered this an outrage. I said: 

"Every trip, down and up, the leadsmen are 
singing through that tangled place for three-quarters 
of an hoiH- on a stretch. How do you reckon I can 
remember such a mess as that?" 

"My boy, you've got to remember it. You've got 
to remember the exact spot and the exact marks the 
boat lay in when we had the shoalest water, in every 
one of the five hundred shoal places between St. Louis 
and New Orleans; and you mustn't get the shoal 
soundings and marks of one trip mixed up with the 

70 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

shoal soundings and marks of another, either, for 
they're not often twice aHke. You must keep them 
separate." 

When I came to myself again, I said: 
''When I get so that I can do that, I'll be able to 
raise the dead, and then I won't have to pilot a 
steamboat to make a living. I want to retire from 
this business. I want a slush -bucket and a brush; 
I'm only fit for a roustabout. I haven't got brains 
enough to be a pilot; and if I had I wouldn't have 
strength enough to carry them around, unless I went 
on crutches." 

"Now drop that! When I say I'll learn ^ a man 
the river, I mean it. And you can depend on it, 
I'll learn him or kill him." 

^" Teach" is not in the river vocabulary. 
71 



CHAPTER IX 

CONTINUED PERPLEXITIES 

THERE was no use in arguing with a person like 
this. I promptly put such a strain on my 
memory that by and by even the shoal water and the 
countless crossing-marks began to stay with me. 
But the result was just the same. I never could 
more than get one knotty thing learned before an- 
other presented itself. Now I had often seen pilots 
gazing at the water and pretending to read it as it 
it were a book ; but it was a book that told me noth- 
ing. A time came at last, however, when Mr. Bixby 
seemed to think me far enough advanced to bear a 
lesson on water-reading. So he began : 

"Do you see that long, slanting line on the face 
of the water? Now, that's a reef. Moreover, it's a 
bluff reef. There is a solid sand-bar under it that 
is nearly as straight up and down as the side of a 
house. There is plenty of water close up to it, but 
mighty little on top of it. If you were to hit it you 
would knock the boat's brains out. Do you see 
where the line fringes out at the upper end and 
begins to fade away?" 

"Yes, sir." 

"Well, that is a low place; that is the head of 
the reef. You can climb over there, and not hurt 

72 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

anything. Cross over, now, and follow along close 
under the reef — easy water there — not much cur- 
rent." 

I followed the reef along till I approached the 
fringed end. Then Mr. Bixby said: 

' * Now get ready. Wait till I give the word. She 
won't want to mount the reef; a boat hates shoal 
water. Stand by — wait — wait — keep her well in 
hand. Now cramp her down! Snatch her! snatch 
her!" 

He seized the other side of the wheel and helped 
to spin it around until it was hard down, and then 
we held it so. The boat resisted, and refused to 
answer for a while, and next she came surging to 
starboard, mounted the reef, and sent a long, angry 
ridge of water foaming away from her bows. 

"Now watch her; watch her like a cat, or she'll 
get away from you. When she fights strong and the 
tiller slips a little, in a jerky, greasy sort of way, let 
up on her a trifle ; it is the way she tells you at night 
that the water is too shoal; but keep edging her up, 
little by little, toward the point. You are well up 
on the bar now; there is a bar under every point, 
because the water that comes down around it forms 
an eddy and allows the sediment to sink. Do you 
see those fine lines on the face of the water that 
branch out like the ribs of a fan? Well, those are 
little reefs; you want to just miss the ends of them, 
but run them pretty close. Now look out — look 
out! Don't you crowd that slick, greasy-looking 
place; there ain't nine feet there; she won't stand it. 
She begins to smell it; look sharp, I tell you! Oh, 

73 



MARK TWAIN 

blazes, there you go! Stop the starboard wheel! 
Quick! Ship up to back! Set her back!" 

The engine bells jingled and the engines answered 
promptly, shooting white columns of steam far aloft 
out of the 'scape-pipes, but it was too late. The 
boat had ' ' smelt " the bar in good earnest ; the foam.y 
ridges that radiated from her bows suddenly dis- 
appeared, a great dead swell came rolling forward, 
and swept ahead of her, she careened far over to 
larboard, and went tearing away toward the shore 
as if she were about scared to death. We were a 
good mile from where we ought to have been when 
we finally got the upper hand of her again. 

During the afternoon watch the next day, Mr. 
Bixby asked me if I knew how to run. the next few 
miles. I said: 

"Go inside the first snag above the point, outside 
the next one, start out from the lower end of Higgins's 
woodyard, make a square crossing, and — " 

"That's all right. I'll be back before you close 
up on the next point." 

But he wasn't. He was still below when I rounded 
it and entered upon a piece of the river which I had 
some misgivings about. I did not know that he 
was hiding behind a chimney to see how I would 
perform. I went gaily along, getting prouder and 
prouder, for he had never left the boat in my sole 
charge such a length of time before. I even got to 
"setting" her and letting the wheel go entirely, 
while I vaingloriously turned my back and inspected 
the stem marks and hummed a tune, a sort of easy 
indifference which I had prodigiously admired in 

74 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

Bixby and other great pilots. Once I inspected 
rather long, and when I faced to the front again 
my heart flew into my mouth so suddenly that if 
I hadn't clapped my teeth together I shoiild have 
lost it. One of those frightful bluff reefs was stretch- 
ing its deadly length right across our bows! My 
head was gone in a moment; I did not know which 
end I stood on; I gasped and could not get my breath ; 
I spun the wheel down with such rapidity that it 
wove itself together like a spider's web; the boat 
answered and turned square away from the reef, but 
the reef followed her! I fled, but still it followed, 
still it kept — right across my bows ! I never looked 
to see where I was going, I only fled. The awful 
crash was imminent. Why didn't that villain 
come? If I committed the crime of ringing a bell 
I might get thrown overboard. But better that than 
kill the boat. So in blind desperation, I started 
such a rattling **shivaree" down below as never 
had astounded an engineer in this world before, I 
fancy. Amidst the frenzy of the bells the engines 
began to back and fill in a curious way, and my 
reason forsook its throne — we were about to crash 
into the woods on the other side of the river. Just 
then Mr. Bixby stepped calmly into view on the hur- 
ricane-deck. My soul went out to him in gratitude. 
My distress vanished ; I would have felt safe on the 
brink of Niagara with Mr. Bixby on the hurricane- 
deck. He blandly and sweetly took his toothpick 
out of his mouth between his fingers, as if it were 
a cigar — we were just in the act of climbing an 
overhanging big tree, and the passengers were scud- 

75 



MARK TWAIN 

ding astern like rats — and lifted up these commands 
to me ever so gently: 

* * Stop the starboard ! Stop the larboard ! Set her 
back on both!** 

The boat hesitated, halted, pressed her nose among 
the boughs a critical instant, then reluctantly began 
to back away. 

* ' Stop the larboard ! Come ahead on it ! Stop the 
starboard! Come ahead on it! Point her for the 
bar!" 

I sailed away as serenely as a summer's morning. 
Mr. Bixby came in and said, with mock simplicity: 

"When you have a hail, my boy, you ought to 
tap the big bell three times before you land, so that 
the engineers can get ready." 

I blushed imder the sarcasm, and said I hadn't 
had any hail. 

**Ah! Then it was for wood, I suppose. The 
officer of the watch will tell you when he wants to 
wood up." 

I went on consuming, and said I wasn't after wood. 

''Indeed? Why, what could you want over here 
in the bend, then? Did you ever know of a boat 
following a bend up-stream at this stage of the 
river?" 

"No, sir — and I wasn't trying to follow it. I was 
getting away from a bluff reef." 

"No, it wasn't a bluff reef; there isn't one within 
three miles of where you were." 

* ' But I saw it. It was as bluff as that one yonder." 

"Just about . Run over i t ! " 

"Do you give it as an order?" 

76 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

*'Yes. Run over it!" 

*'If I don't, I wish I may die." 

**A11 right; I am taking the responsibility." 

I was just as anxious to kill the boat, now, as I 
had been to save it before. I impressed my orders 
upon my memory, to be used at the inquest, and 
made a straight break for the reef. As it disappeared 
under our bows I held my breath; but we slid over 
it like oil. 

*'Now, don't you see the difference? It wasn't 
anything but a wind reef. The wind does that." 

"So I see. But it is exactly like a bluff reef. 
How am I ever going to tell them apart?" 

'T can't tell you. It is an instinct. By and by 
you will just naturally know one from the other, but 
you never will be able to explain why or how you 
know them apart." 

It turned out to be true. The face of the water, 
in time, became a wonderful book — a book that was 
a dead language to the imeducated passenger, but 
which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering 
its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered 
them with a voice. And it was not a book to be 
read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story 
to tell every day. Throughout the long twelve 
hundred miles there was never a page that was void 
of interest, never one that you could leave imread 
without loss, never one that you would want to skip, 
thinking you could find higher enjoyment in some 
other thing. There never was so wonderful a book 
written by man; never one whose interest was so 
absorbing, so unflagging, so sparklingly renewed with 

77 



MARK TWAIN 

every reperusal. The passenger who could not read 
it was charmed with a pecuHar sort of faint dimple 
on its surface (on the rare occasions when he did not 
overlook it altogether) ; but to the pilot that was an 
italicized passage; indeed, it was more than that, it 
was a legend of the largest capitals, with a string of 
shouting exclamation-points at the end of it, for it 
meant that a wreck or a rock was buried there that 
could tear the life out of the strongest vessel that 
ever floated. It is the faintest and simplest expres- 
sion the water ever makes, and the most hideous to 
a pilot's eye. In truth, the passenger who could not 
read this book saw nothing but all manner of pretty 
pictures in it, painted by the sun and shaded by the 
clouds, whereas to the trained eye these were not 
pictures at all, but the grimmest and most dead- 
earnest of reading-matter. 

Now when I had mastered the language of this 
water, and had come to know every trifling feature 
that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew 
the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable 
acquisition. But I had lost something, too. I had 
lost something which could never be restored to me 
while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry, 
had gone out of the majestic river! I still kept in 
mind a certain wonderful sunset which I witnessed 
when steamboating was new to me. A broad ex- 
panse of the river was turned to blood ; in the middle 
distance the red hue brightened into gold, through 
which a solitary log came floating, black and con- 
spicuous; in one place a long, slanting mark lay 
sparkling upon the water ; in another the surface was 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

broken by boiling, tumbling rings, that were as 
many-tinted as an opal; where the ruddy flush was 
faintest, was a smooth spot that was covered with 
graceful circles and radiating lines, ever so deli- 
cately traced; the shore on our left was densely 
wooded, and the somber shadow that fell from this 
forest was broken in one place by a long, ruffled trail 
that shone like silver ; and high above the forest wall 
a clean-stemmed dead tree waved a single leafy 
bough that glowed like a flame in the unobstructed 
splendor that was flowing from the sun. There were 
graceful curves, reflected images, woody heights, soft 
distances ; and over the whole scene, far and near, the 
dissolving lights drifted steadily, enriching it every 
passing moment with new marvels of coloring. 

I stood like one bewitched. I drank it in, in a 
speechless rapture. The world was new to me, and 
I had never seen anything like this at home. But 
as I have said, a day came when I began to cease 
from noting the glories and the charms which the 
moon and the sun and the twilight wrought upon 
the river's face; another day came when I ceased 
altogether to note them. Then, if that sunset scene 
had been repeated, I should have looked upon it 
without rapture, and should have commented upon 
it, inwardly, after this fashion: ''This sun means that 
we are going to have wind to-morrov/; that floating 
log means that the river is rising, small thanks to 
it; that slanting mark on the water refers to a bluff 
reef which is going to kill somebody's steamboat one 
of these nights, if it keeps on stretching out like that ; 
those tumbling 'boils' show a dissolving bar and a 

79 



MARK TWAIN 

changing channel there; the lines and circles in the 
slick water over yonder are a warning that that 
troublesome place is shoaling up dangerously; that 
silver streak in the shadow of the forest is the 
'break' from a new snag, and he has located himself 
in the very best place he could have found to fish 
for steamboats; that tall dead tree, with a single 
living branch, is not going to last long, and then 
how is a body ever going to get through this blind 
place at night without the friendly old landmark?" 
No, the romance and beauty were all gone from 
the river. All the value any feature of it had for 
me now was the amount of usefulness it could furnish 
toward compassing the safe piloting of a steamboat. 
Since those days, I have pitied doctors from my 
heart. What does the lovely flush in a beauty's 
cheek mean to a doctor but a "break" that ripples 
above some deadly disease? Are not all her visible 
charms sown thick with what are to him the signs and 
symbols of hidden decay? Does he ever see her 
beauty at all, or doesn't he simply view her profes- 
sionally, and comment upon her unwholesome con- 
dition all to himself? And doesn't he sometimes 
wonder whether he has gained most or lost most by 
learning his trade? 

80 



CHAPTER X 

COMPLETING MY EDUCATION 

WHOSOEVER has done me the coiirtesy to 
read my chapters which have preceded this 
may possibly wonder that I deal so minutely with 
piloting as a science. It was the prime pttrpose of 
those chapters; and I am not qtiite done yet. I wish 
to show, in the most patient and painstaking way, 
what a wonderful science it is. Ship-channels are 
buoyed and lighted, and therefore it is a compara- 
tively easy undertaking to learn to nm them; clear- 
water rivers with gravel bottoms, change their chan- 
nels very gradually, and therefore one needs to learn 
them but once ; but piloting becomes another matter 
when you apply it to vast streams like the Missis- 
sippi and the Missouri, whose alluvial banks cave 
and change constantly, whose snags are always 
hunting up new quarters, whose sand - bars are 
never at rest, whose channels are forever dodging 
and shirking, and whose obstructions must be con- 
fronted in all nights and all weathers without the 
aid of a single lighthouse or a single buoy; for 
there is neither Hght nor buoy to be foimd any- 
where in all this three or four thousand miles of 
villainous river. ^ I feel justified in enlarging upon 

* True at the time referred to; not true now (1882). 
81 



MARK TWAIN 

this great science for the reason that I feel sure 
no one has ever yet written a paragraph about it 
who had piloted a steamboat himself, and so had a 
practical knowledge of the subject. If the theme 
was hackneyed, I should be obliged to deal gently 
with the reader; but since it is wholly new, I have 
felt at liberty to take up a considerable degree of 
room with it. 

When I had learned the name and position of 
every visible feature of the river; when I had so 
mastered its shape that I could shut my eyes and 
trace it from St. Louis to New Orleans; when I had 
learned to read the face of the water as one would 
cull the news from the morning paper; and finally, 
when I had trained my dull memory to treasure up 
an endless array of soundings and crossing-marks, 
and keep fast hold of them, I judged that my educa- 
tion was complete; so I got to tilting my cap to the 
side of my head, and wearing a toothpick in my 
mouth at the wheel. Mr. Bixby had his eye on 
these airs. One day he said: 

'*What is the height of that bank yonder, at 
Burgess's?" 

''How can I tell, sir? It is three-quarters of a 
mile away." 

"Very poor eye — ^very poor. Take the glass." 

I took the glass and presently said : 

"I can't tell. I suppose that that bank is about 
a foot and a half high." 

''Foot and a half! That's a six-foot bank. How 
high was the bank along here last trip?" 

"I don't know; I never noticed." 

82 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

**You didn't? Well, you must always do it 
hereafter." 

*'Why?" 

*' Because you'll have to know a good many things 
that it tells you. For one thing, it tells you the 
stage of the river — tells you whether there's more 
water or less in the river along here than there was 
last trip." 

"The leads tell me that." I rather thought I had 
the advantage of him there. 

**Yes, but suppose the leads lie? The bank would 
tell you so, and then you would stir those leadsmen 
up a bit. There was a ten-foot bank here last trip, 
and there is only a six-foot bank now. What does 
that signify?" 

*'That the river is four feet higher than it was last 
trip." 

''Very good. Is the river rising or falling?" 

*' Rising." 

*'No, it ain't." 

"I guess I am right, sir. Yonder is some drift- 
wood floating down the stream." 

"A rise starts the driftwood, but then it keeps on 
floating awhile after the river is done rising. Now 
the bank will tell you about this. Wait till you come 
to a place where it shelves a little. Now here: do 
you see this narrow belt of fine sediment ? That was 
deposited while the water was higher. You see the 
driftwood begins to strand, too. The bank helps 
in other ways. Do you see that stump on the false 
point?" 

*'Ay, ay, sir." 

83 



MARK TWAIN 

**Well, the water is just up to the roots of it. You 
must make a note of that.'* 

"Why?" 

** Because that means that there's seven feet in the 
chute of 103." 

"But 103 is a long way up the river yet." 

"That's where the benefit of the bank comes in. 
There is water enough in 103 now, yet there may not 
be by the time we get there, but the bank will keep 
us posted all along. You don't run close chutes 
on a falling river, up-stream, and there are precious 
few of them that you are allowed to nm at all 
down-stream. There's a law of the United States 
against it. The river may be rising by the time we 
get to 103, and in that case we'll run it. We are 
drawing — how much ?" 

"Six feet aft — six and a half forward." 

"Well, you do seem to know something." 

"But what I particularly want to know is, if I 
have got to keep up an everlasting measuring of the 
banks of this river, twelve hundred miles, month in 
and month out?" 

"Of course!" 

My emotions were too deep for words for a while. 
Presently I said: 

' ' And how about these chutes ? Are there many of 
them?" 

"I should say so! I fancy we sha'n't run any of 
the river this trip as you've ever seen it run before — 
so to speak. If the river begins to rise again, we'll 
go up behind bars that you've always seen standing 
out of the river, high and dry, like a roof of a house; 

84 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

well cut across low places that you've never noticed 
at all, right through the middle of bars that cover 
three hundred acres of river; well creep through 
cracks where you've always thought was soHd land; 
we'll dart through the woods and leave twenty -five 
miles of river off to one side; we'll see the hind side 
of every island between New Orleans and Cairo." 

''Then I've got to go to work and learn just as 
much more river as I already know." 

"Just about twice as much more, as near as you 
can come at it." 

"Well, one lives to find out. I think I was a fool 
when I went into this business." 

"Yes, that is true. And you are yet. But you'll 
not be when you've learned it." 

"Ah, I never can learn it!" 

"I will see that you do.'' 

By and by I ventured again: 

"Have I got to learn all this thing just as I know 
the rest of the river — shapes and all — and so I can 
run it at night?" 

"Yes. And you've got to have good fair marks 
from one end of the river to the other, that will 
help the bank tell you when there is water enough in 
each of these countless places — like that stump, you 
know. When the river first begins to rise, you can 
run half a dozen of the deepest of them ; when it rises 
a foot more you can run another dozen ; the next foot 
will add a couple of dozen, and so on: so you see 
you have to know your banks and marks to a dead 
moral certainty, and never get them mixed ; for when 
you start through one of those cracks, there's no 

85 



MARK TWAIN 

backing out again, as there is in the big river; you've 
got to go through, or stay there six months if you 
get caught on a falling river. There are about fifty 
of these cracks which you can't run at all except 
when the river is brimftd and over the banks." 
**This new lesson is a cheerful prospect." 
*' Cheerful enough. And mind what I've just told 
you; when you start into one of those places you've 
got to go through. They are too narrow to turn 
around in, too crooked to back out of, and the shoal 
water is always up at the head; never elsewhere. And 
the head of them is always likely to be filling up, 
little by Httle, so that the marks you reckon their 
depth by, this season, may not answer for next." 
"Learn a new set, then, every year?" 
** Exactly. Cramp her up to the bar! What are 
you standing up through the middle of the river for?" 
The next few months showed me strange things. 
On the same day that we held the conversation above 
narrated we met a great rise coming down the river. 
The whole vast face of the stream was black with 
drifting dead logs, broken boughs, and great trees 
that had caved in and been washed away. It re- 
quired the nicest steering to pick one's way through 
this rushing raft, even in the daytime, when crossing 
from point to point; and at night the difficulty was 
mightily increased; every now and then a huge log, 
lying deep in the water, would suddenly appear right 
under our bows, coming head-on; no use to try to 
avoid it then ; we could only stop the engines, and one 
wheel would walk over that log from one end to the 
other, keeping up a thundering racket and careening 

86 




THE ORATOR OF THE SCOW 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

the boat in a way that was very uncomfortable to 
passengers. Now and then we would hit one of these 
sunken logs a rattling bang, dead in the center, with 
a full head of steam, and it would stun the boat as 
if she had hit a continent. Sometimes this log would 
lodge and stay right across our nose, and back the 
Mississippi up before it; we would have to do a 
little crawfishing, then, to get away from the obstruc- 
tion. We often hit white logs in the dark, for we 
could not see them until we were right on them, but 
a black log is a pretty distinct object at night. A 
white snag is an ugly customer when the daylight 
is gone. 

Of course, on the great rise, down came a swarm 
of prodigious timber-rafts from the headwaters of the 
Mississippi, coal-barges from Pittsburg, little trading- 
scows from everywhere, and broadhoms from * ' Posey 
County,'* Indiana, freighted with * 'fruit and fumi- 
ttue" — the usual term for describing it, though in 
plain English the freight thus aggrandized was hoop- 
poles and pumpkins. Pilots bore a mortal hatred 
to these craft, and it was returned with usury. The 
law required all such helpless traders to keep a light 
burning, but it was a law that was often broken. 
All of a sudden, on a murky night, a light would hop 
up, right imder our bows, almost, and an agonized 
voice, with the backwoods ** whang" to it, would 
wail out : 

"Whar'n the you goin* to! Cain't you see 

nothin', you dash-dashed aig-suckin', sheep-stealin*, 
one-eyed son of a st tiffed monkey!" 

Then for an instant, as we whistled by, the red 

87 



MARK TWAIN 

glare from our furnaces would reveal the scow and 
the form of the gesticulating orator, as if imder a 
lightning flash, and in that instant our firemen and 
deck-hands would send and receive a tempest of 
missiles and profanity, one of our wheels would walk 
off with the crashing fragments of a steering-oar, and 
down the dead blackness would shut again. And 
that flatboatman would be sure to go into New 
Orleans and sue our boat, swearing stoutly that he 
had a light burning all the time, when in truth his 
gang had the lantern down below to sing and lie and 
drink and gamble by, and no watch on deck. Once 
at night, in one of those forest-bordered crevices 
(behind an island) which steamboatmen intensely 
describe with the phrase "as dark as the inside of a 
cow," we should have eaten up a Posey County 
family, fruit, furniture, and all, but that they hap- 
pened to be fiddling down below and v/e just caught 
the soimd of the music in time to sheer off, doing no 
serious damage, unfortunately, but coming so near 
it that we had good hopes for a moment. These 
people brought up their lantern, then, of course; and 
as we backed and filled to get away, the precious 
family stood in the light of it — ^both sexes and various 
ages — and cursed us till everything turned blue. 
Once a coal-boatman sent a bullet through our pilot- 
house when we borrowed a steering-oar of him in a 
very narrow place. 

88 



CHAPTER XI 

THE RIVER RISES 

DURING this big rise these small-fry craft were 
an intolerable nuisance. We were ninning 
chute after chute — a new world to me — and if there 
was a particiilarly cramped place in a chute, we 
would be pretty sure to meet a broadhom there ; and 
if he failed to be there, we would find him in a still 
worse locality, namely, the head of the chute, on the 
shoal water. And then there would be no end of 
profane cordialities exchanged. 

Sometimes, in the big river, when we would be 
feeling our way cautiously along through a fog, the 
deep hush would suddenly be broken by yells and a 
clamor of tin pans, and all in an instant a log raft 
would appear vaguely through the webby veil, close 
upon us; and then we did not wait to swap knives, 
but snatched our engine-bells out by the roots and 
piled on all the steam we had, to scramble out of the 
way! One doesn't hit a rock or a solid log raft with 
a steamboat when he can get excused. 

You will hardly believe it, but many steamboat 
clerks always carried a large assortment of religious 
tracts with them in those old departed steamboating 
days. Indeed they did! Twenty times a day we 
would be cramping up around a bar, while a string 

89 



MARK TWAIN 

of these small-fry rascals were drifting down into 
the head of the bend away above and beyond us a 
couple of miles. Now a skiff would dart away from 
one of them, and come fighting its laborious way 
across the desert of water. It would "ease all" in 
the shadow of our forecastle, and the panting oars- 
men would shout, *' Gimme a pa-a-per!" as the skiff 
drifted swiftly astern. The clerk would throw over 
a file of New Orleans journals. If these were picked 
up without comment, you might notice that now a 
dozen other skiffs had been drifting down upon us 
without saying anything. You understand, they had 
been waiting to see how No. i was going to fare. 
No. I making no comment, all the rest would bend 
to their oars and come on, now; and as fast as they 
came the clerk would heave over neat bundles of 
religious tracts, tied to shingles. The amoimt of 
hard swearing which twelve packages of religious 
literature will command when impartially divided up 
among twelve raftsmen's crews, who have pulled a 
heavy skiff two miles on a hot day to get them, is 
simply incredible. 

As I have said, the big rise brought a new world 
under my vision. By the time the river was over 
its banks we had forsaken our old paths and were 
hourly climbing over bars that had stood ten feet 
out of water before; we were shaving stumpy shores, 
like that at the foot of Madrid Bend, which I had 
always seen avoided before; we were clattering 
through chutes like that of 82, where the opening at 
the foot was an unbroken wall of timber till our nose 
was almost at the very spot. Some of these chutes 

90 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

were utter solitudes. The dense, untouched forest 
overhung both banks of the crooked Httle crack, and 
one could believe that human creatures had never 
intruded there before. The swinging grape-vines, 
the grassy nooks and vistas glimpsed as we swept by, 
the flowering creepers waving their red blossoms from 
the tops of dead trunks, and all the spendthrift rich- 
ness of the forest foliage, were wasted and thrown 
away there. The chutes were lovely places to steer 
in; they were deep, except at the head; the current 
was gentle; under the "points'* the water was ab- 
solutely dead, and the invisible banks so bluff that 
where the tender willow thickets projected you cotild 
bury your boat's broadside in them as you tore 
along, and then you seemed fairly to fly. 

Behind other islands we found wretched little 
farms, and wretcheder little log cabins; there were 
crazy rail fences sticking a foot or two above the 
water, with one or two jeans-clad, chills-racked, 
yellow-faced male miserables roosting on the top 
rail, elbows on knees, jaws in hands, grinding tobacco 
and discharging the result at floating chips through 
crevices left by lost teeth; while the rest of the family 
and the few farm animals were huddled together in 
an empty wood-flat riding at her "moorings close at 
hand. In this flatboat the family would have to 
cook and eat and sleep for a lesser or greater number 
of days (or possibly weeks), until the river should 
fall two or three feet and let them get back to their 
log cabins and their chills again — chills being a 
merciful provision of an all-wise Providence to enable 
them to take exercise without exertion. And this 

91 



MARK TWAIN 

sort of watery camping out was a thing which these 
people were rather Hable to be treated to a couple 
of times a year: by the December rise out of the 
Ohio, and the June rise out of the Mississippi. And 
yet these were kindly dispensations, for they at 
least enabled the poor things to rise from the dead 
now and then, and look upon life when a steamboat 
went by. They appreciated the blessing, too, for 
they spread their mouths and eyes wide open and 
made the most of these occasions. Now what could 
these banished creatures find to do to keep from 
dying of the blues during the low- water season ! 

Once, in one of these lovely island chutes, we fotmd 
our course completely bridged by a great fallen tree. 
This will serve to show how narrow some of the 
chutes were. The passengers had an hour's recrea- 
tion in a virgin wilderness, while the boat-hands 
chopped the bridge away; for there was no such thing 
as turning back, you comprehend. 

From Cairo to Baton Rouge, when the river is 
over its banks, you have no particular trouble in 
the night; for the thousand-mile wall of dense forest 
that guards the two banks all the way is only gapped 
with a farm or woodyard opening at intervals, and 
so you can't **get out of the river" much easier than 
you could get out of a fenced lane; but from Baton 
Rouge to New Orleans it is a different matter. The 
river is more than a mile wdde, and very deep — as 
much as two hundred feet, in places. Both banks, 
for a good deal over a hundred miles, are shorn of 
their timber and bordered by continuous sugar- 
plantations, with only here and there a scattering 

92 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

sapling or row of ornamental China trees. The tim- 
ber is shown off clear to the rear of the plantations, 
from two to four miles. When the first frost threat- 
ens to come, the planters snatch off their crops in a 
hurry. When they have finished grinding the cane, 
they form the refuse of the stalks (which they call 
bagasse) into great piles and set fire to them, though 
in other sugar countries the bagasse is used for fuel 
in the furnaces of the sugar-mills. Now the piles 
of damp bagasse bum slowly, and smoke like Satan's 
own kitchen. 

An embankment ten or fifteen feet high guards 
both banks of the Mississippi all the way down that 
lower end of the river, and this embankment is set 
back from the edge of the shore from ten to perhaps 
a hundred feet, according to circumstances; say 
thirty or forty feet, as a general thing. Fill that 
whole region with an impenetrable gloom of smoke 
from a hundred miles of burning bagasse piles, when 
the river is over the banks, and turn a steamboat 
loose along there at midnight and see how she will 
feel. And see how you will feel, too! You find 
yourself away out in the midst of a vague, dim sea 
that is shoreless, that fades out and loses itself in 
the murky distances ; for you cannot discern the thin 
rib of embankment, and you are always imagining 
you see a straggling tree when you don't. The 
plantations themselves are transformed by the smoke, 
and look like a part of the sea. All through your 
watch you are tortured with the exquisite misery 
of uncertainty. You hope you are keeping in the 
river, but you do not know. All that you are sure 

93 



•MARK TWAIN 

about is that you are likely to be within six feet ol 
the bank and destruction, when you think you are 
a good half-mile from shore. And you are sure, also, 
that if you chance suddenly to fetch up against the 
embankment and topple your chimneys overboard, 
you will have the small comfort of knowing that it 
is about what you were expecting to do. One of the 
great Vicksburg packets darted out into a sugar- 
plantation one night, at such a time, and had to 
stay there a week. But there was no novelty about 
it; it had often been done before. 

I thought I had finished this chapter, but I wish 
to add a curious thing, while it is in my mind. It 
is only relevant in that it is connected with piloting. 
There used to be an excellent pilot on the river, a 
Mr. X, who was a somnambiiHst. It was said that 
if his mind was troubled about a bad piece of river, 
he was pretty sure to get up and walk in his sleep 
and do strange things. He was once fellow-pilot for 
a trip or two with George Ealer, on a great New 
Orleans passenger - packet. During a considerable 
part of the first trip George was uneasy, but got over 
it by and by, as X seemed content to stay in his bed 
when asleep. Late one night the boat was approach- 
ing Helena, Ark. ; the water was low, and the crossing 
above the town in a very blind and tangled condition. 
X had seen the crossing since Ealer had, and as the 
night was particularly drizzly, sullen, and dark, 
Ealer was considering whether he had not better 
have X called to assist in running the place, when 
the door opened and X walked in. Now, on very 
dark nights, light is a deadly enemy to piloting ; you 

94 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

are aware that if you stand in a lighted room, on 
such a night, you cannot see things in the street to 
any purpose ; but if you put out the lights and stand 
in the gloom you can make out objects in the street 
pretty well. So, on very dark nights, pilots do not 
smoke ; they allow no fire in the pilot-house stove, if 
there is a crack which can allow the least ray to 
escape; they order the furnaces to be curtained 
with huge tarpaulins and the skylights to be close- 
ly blinded. Then no light whatever issues from 
the boat. The imdefinable shape that now en- 
tered the pilot-house had Mr. X's voice. This 
said: 

**Let me take her, George; I've seen this place 
since you have, and it is so crooked that I reckon 
I can run it myself easier than I could tell you how 
to do it.'' 

**It is kind of you, and I swear I am willing. 
I haven't got another drop of perspiration left in me. 
I have been spinning around and around the wheel 
like a squirrel. It is so dark I can't tell which way 
she is swinging till she is coming around like a 
whirligig." 

So Ealer took a seat on the bench, panting and 
breathless. The black phantom assumed the wheel 
without saying anything, steadied the waltzing 
steamer with a turn or two, and then stood at ease, 
coaxing her a little to this side and then to that, as 
gently and as sweetly as if the time had been noon- 
day. When Ealer observed this marvel of steering, 
he wished he had not confessed! He stared, and 
wondered, and finally said: 

95 



MARK TWAIN 

**Well, I thought I knew how to steer a steam- 
boat, but that was another mistake of mine." 

X said nothing, but went serenely on with his 
work. He rang for the leads ; he rang to slow down 
the steam; he worked the boat carefully and neatly 
into invisible marks, then stood at the center of the 
wheel and peered blandly out into the blackness, fore 
and aft, to verify his position; as the leads shoaled 
more and more, he stopped the engines entirely, and 
the dead silence and suspense of "drifting" followed; 
when the shoalest water was struck, he cracked on 
the steam, carried her handsomely over, and then 
began to work her warily into the next system of 
shoal-marks; the same patient, heedful use of leads 
and engines followed, the boat slipped through with- 
out touching bottom, and entered upon the third 
and last intricacy of the crossing; imperceptibly she 
moved through the gloom, crept by inches into her 
marks, drifted tediously till the shoalest water was 
cried, and then, under a tremendous head of steam, 
went swinging over the reef and away into deep 
water and safety ! 

Ealer let his long-pent breath pour in a great 
relieving sigh, and said: 

''That's the sweetest piece of piloting that was 
ever done on the Mississippi River! I wouldn't 
believe it could be done, if I hadn't seen it." 

There was no reply, and he added: 

"Just hold her five minutes longer, partner, and 
let me run down and get a cup of coffee." 

A minute later Ealer was biting into a pie, down 
in the "texas," and comforting himself with coffee. 

96 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

Just then the night watchman happened in, and was 
about to happen out again, when he noticed Ealer 
and exclaimed : 

"Who is at the wheel, sir?" 

"X." 

"Dart for the pilot-house, quicker than lightning!" 

The next moment both men were flying up the 
pilot-house companion way, three steps at a jump! 
Nobody there! The great steamer was whistling 
down the middle of the river at her own sweet will! 
The watchman shot out of the place again; Ealer 
seized the wheel, set an engine back with power, 
and held his breath while the boat reluctantly swung 
away from a "towhead," which she was about to 
knock into the middle of the Gulf of Mexico! 

By and by the watchman came back and said: 

"Didn't that Itinatic tell you he was asleep, when 
he first came up here?" 

"No." 

"Well, he was. I found him walking along on top 
of the railings, just as unconcerned as another man 
would walk a pavement ; and I put him to bed ; now 
just this minute there he was again, away astern, 
going through that sort of tight -rope deviltry the 
same as before." 

"Well, I think I'll stay by next time he has one 
of those fits. But I hope he'll have them often. 
You just ought to have seen him take this boat 
through Helena crossing. I never saw anything so 
gaudy before. And if he can do such gold-leaf, kid- 
glove, diamond-breastpin piloting when he is soimd 
asleep, what couldn't he do if he was dead!" 

97 



CHAPTER XII 

SOUNDING 

WHEN the river is very low, and one's steam- 
boat is ' ' drawing all the water " there is in the 
channel — or a few inches more, as was often the case 
in the old times — one must be painfully circumspect 
in his piloting. We used to have to ' ' sound * ' a num- 
ber of particularly bad places almost every trip when 
the river was at a very low stage. 

Sounding is done in this way: The boat ties up 
at the shore, just above the shoal crossing; the pilot 
not on watch takes his *'cub" or steersman and a 
picked crew of men (sometimes an officer also), and 
goes out in the yawl — provided the boat has not that 
rare and sumptuous luxury, a regularly devised 
**soimding-boat " — and proceeds to hunt for the best 
water, the pilot on duty watching his movements 
through a spy-glass, meantime, and in some in- 
stances assisting by signals of the boat's whistle, 
signifying *'try higher up" or "try lower down"; 
for the surface of the water, like an oil-painting, is 
more expressive and intelligible when inspected from 
a little distance than very close at hand. The whistle 
signals are seldom necessary, however; never, per- 
haps, except when the wind confuses the significant 
ripples upon the water's surface. When the yawl 

98 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

has reached the shoal place, the speed is slackened, 
the pilot begins to sound the depth with a pole 
ten or twelve feet long, and the steersman at the 
tiller obeys the order to ''hold her up to starboard"; 
or '*let her fall off to larboard " ;^ or ''steady — steady 
as you go." 

When the measurements indicate that the yawl is 
approaching the shoalest part of the reef, the com- 
mand is given to "Ease all!" Then the men stop 
rowing and the yawl drifts with the current. The 
next order is, "Stand by with the buoy!" The mo- 
ment the shallowest point is reached, the pilot de- 
livers the order, "Let go the buoy!" and over she 
goes. If the pilot is not satisfied, he sounds the 
place again; if he finds better water higher up or 
lower down, he removes the buoy to that place. 
Being finally satisfied, he gives the order, and all 
the men stand their oars straight up in the air, in 
line; a blast from the boat's whistle indicates that 
the signal has been seen; then the men "give way" 
on their oars and lay the yawl alongside the buoy; 
the steamer comes creeping carefully down, is pointed 
straight at the buoy, husbands her power for the 
coming struggle, and presently, at the critical mo- 
ment, turns on all her steam and goes grinding and 
wallowing over the buoy and the sand, and gains the 
deep water beyond. Or maybe she doesn't; maybe 
she "strikes and swings." Then she has to while 
away several hours (or days) sparring herself off. 

Sometimes a buoy is not laid at all, but the yawl 

*The term ''larboard" is never used at sea, now, to signify the left 
hand; but was always used on the river in my time. 

99 



MARK TWAIN 

goes ahead, hunting the best water, and the steamer 
follows along in its wake. Often there is a deal of 
fun and excitement about sounding, especially if it 
is a glorious summer day, or a blustering night. 
But in winter the cold and the peril take most of 
the fim out of it. 

A buoy is nothing but a board four or five feet 
long, with one end turned up ; it is a reversed school- 
house bench, with one of the supports left and the 
other removed. It is anchored on the shoalest part 
of the reef by a rope with a heavy stone made fast 
to the end of it. But for the resistance of the turned- 
up end of the reversed bench, the current would pull 
the buoy under water. At night, a paper lantern 
with a candle in it is fastened on top of the buoy, 
and this can be seen a mile or more, a little glimmer- 
ing spark in the waste of blackness. 

Nothing delights a cub so much as an opportunity 
to go out soimding. There is such an air of adven- 
ture about it; often there is danger; it is so gaudy 
and man-of-war-like to sit up in the stem-sheets and 
steer a swift yawl; there is something fine about the 
exultant spring of the boat when an experienced 
old sailor crew throw their souls into the oars; it is 
lovely to see the white foam stream away from the 
bows; there is music in the rush of the water; it is 
deliciously exhilarating, in summer, to go speeding 
over the breezy expanses of the river when the world 
of wavelets is dancing in the sun. It is such grand- 
eur, too, to the cub, to get a chance to give an order; 
for often the pilot will simply say, *'Let her go 
about!" and leave the rest to the cub, who instantly 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

cries, in his sternest tone of command, "Ease, star- 
board! Strong on the larboard! Starboard, give 
way! With a will, men!" The cub enjoys sound- 
ing for the further reason that the eyes of the pas- 
sengers are watching all the yawl's movements with 
absorbing interest, if the time be daylight; and if 
it be night, he knows that those same wondering eyes 
are fastened upon the yawl's lantern as it glides out 
into the gloom and dims away in the remote dis- 
tance. 

One trip a pretty girl of sixteen spent her time in 
our pilot-house with her imcle and aunt, every day 
and all day long. I fell in love with her. So did 
Mr. Thornburg's cub, Tom G. Tom and I had been 
bosom friends until this time; but now a coolness 
began to arise. I told the girl a good many of my 
river adventures, and made myself out a good deal 
of a hero; Tom tried to make himself appear to be 
a hero, too, and succeeded to some extent, but then 
he always had a way of embroidering. However, 
virtue is its own reward, so I was a barely perceptible 
trifle ahead in the contest. About this time some- 
thing happenec? which promised handsomely for me : 
the pilots decided to sound the crossing at the head 
of 21. This would occur about nine or ten o'clock 
at night, when the passengers would be still up; it 
would be Mr. Thornburg's watch, therefore my chief 
would have to do the sounding. We had a perfect 
love of a sounding-boat — long, trim, graceful, and as 
fleet as a greyhound; her thwarts were cushioned; 
she carried twelve oarsmen; one of the mates was 
always sent in her to transmit orders to her crew, 

lOI 



MARK TWAIN 

for ours was a steamer where no end of ''style" was 
put on. 

We tied up at the shore above 21, and got ready. 
It was a foul night, and the river was so wide, 
there, that a landsman's uneducated eyes could dis- 
cern no opposite shore through such a gloom. The 
passengers were alert and interested; everything 
was satisfactory. As I hurried through the engine- 
room, picturesquely gotten up in storm toggery, I 
met Tom, and could not forbear delivering myself 
of a mean speech: 

"Ain't you glad you don't have to go out sound- 
ing?" 

Tom was passing on, but he quickly turned, and 
said: 

''Now just for that, you can go and get the 
sounding-pole yourself. I was going after it, but 
I'd see you in Halifax, now, before I'd do it." 

"Who wants you to get it? I don't. It's in the 
sounding-boat." 

"It ain't, either. It's been new-painted; and it's 
been up on the ladies' cabin-guards two days, drying." 

I flew back, and shortly arrived among the crowd 
of watching and wondering ladies just in time to hear 
the command : 

"Give way, men!" 

I looked over, and there was the gallant sounding- 
boat booming away, the unprincipled Tom presiding 
at the tiller, and my chief sitting by him with the 
sounding-pole which I had been sent on a fool's 
errand to fetch. Then that young girl said to me: 

"Oh, how awful to have to go out in that little 
102 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

boat on such a night! Do you think there is any 
danger?" 

I would rather have been stabbed. I went off, 
full of venom, to help in the pilot-house. By and by 
the boat's lantern disappeared, and after an interval 
a wee spark glimmered upon the face of the water 
a mile away. Mr. Thomburg blew the whistle in 
acknowledgment, backed the steamer out, and made 
for it. We flew along for a while, then slackened 
steam and went cautiously gliding toward the spark. 
Presently Mr. Thomburg exclaimed : 

"Hello, the buoy lantern's outl" 

He stopped the engines. A moment or two later 
he said: 

*'Why, there it is again!" 

So he came ahead on the engines once more, and 
rang for the leads. Gradually the water shoaled up, 
and then began to deepen again! Mr. Thomburg 
m.uttered : 

''Well, I don't understand this. I believe that 
buoy has drifted off the reef. Seems to be a little 
too far to the left. No matter, it is safest to run 
over it, anyhow." 

So, in that solid world of darkness we went creep- 
ing down on the light. Just as our bows were in 
the act of plowing over it, Mr. Thomburg seized the 
bell-ropes, rang a startling peal, and exclaimed: 

''My soul, it's the soimding-boat!" 

A sudden chorus of wild alarms burst out far 
below — a pause — and then a sound of grinding and 
crashing followed. Mr. Thomburg exclaimed: 

*' There! the paddle-wheel has ground the sound- 



MARK TWAIN 

ing-boat to lucifer matches! Run! See who is 
killed!" 

I was on the main-deck in the twinkling of an 
eye. My chief and the third mate and nearly all 
the men were safe. They had discovered their 
danger when it was too late to pull out of the way; 
then, when the great guards overshadowed them a 
moment later, they were prepared and knew what to 
do; at my chief's order they sprang at the right 
instant, seized the guard, and were hauled aboard. 
The next moment the sounding-yawl swept aft to the 
wheel and was struck and splintered to atoms. Two 
of the men and the cub Tom were missing — a fact 
which spread like wildfire over the boat. The 
passengers came flocking to the forward gangway, 
ladies and all, anxious-eyed, white-faced, and talked 
in awed voices of the dreadful thing. And often and 
again I heard them say, "Poor fellows! poor boy, 
poor boy!" 

By this time the boat's yawl was manned and 
away, to search for the missing. Now a faint call 
was heard, off to the left. The yawl had disappeared 
in the other direction. Half the people rushed to 
one side to encourage the swimmer with their shouts ; 
the other half rushed the other way to shriek to the 
yawl to turn about. By the calHngs the swimmer 
was approaching, but some said the sound showed 
failing strength. The crowd massed themselves 
against the boiler-deck railings, leaning over and 
staring into the gloom; and every faint and fainter 
cry wrung from them such words as "Ah, poor fel- 
low, poor fellow! is there no way to save him?" 

104 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

But still the cries held out, and drew nearer, and 
presently the voice said pluckily : 

"I can make it! Stand by with a rope!'* 

What a rousing cheer they gave him! The chief 
mate took his stand in the glare of a torch-basket, 
a coil of rope in his hand, and his men grouped about 
him. The next moment the swimmer's face ap- 
peared in the circle of light, and in another one the 
owner of it was hauled aboard, limp and drenched, 
while cheer on cheer went up. It was that devil Tom. 

The yawl crew searched everywhere, but found no 
sign of the two men. They probably failed to catch 
the guard, tumbled back, and were struck by the 
wheel and killed. Tom had never jumped for the 
guard at all, but had plunged head first into the river 
and dived under the wheel. It was nothing; I could 
have done it easy enough, and I said so; but every- 
body went on just the same, making a wonderful 
to-do over that ass, as if he had done something 
great. That girl couldn't seem to have enough of 
that pitiful ''hero" the rest of the trip; but little I 
cared ; I loathed her, anyway. 

The way we came to mistake the sounding-boat's 
lantern for the buoy light was this: My chief said 
that after laying the buoy he fell away and watched 
it till it seemed to be secure; then he took up a po- 
sition a hundred yards below it and a little to one 
side of the steamer's course, headed the sounding- 
boat up-stream, and waited. Having to wait some 
time, he and the officer got to talking; he looked up 
when he judged that the steamer was about on the 
reef; saw that the buoy was gone, but supposed that 

105 



MARK TWAIN 

the steamer had already run over it ; he went on with 
his talk ; he noticed that the steamer was getting very 
close down to him, but that was the correct thing; 
it was her business to shave him closely, for con- 
venience in taking him aboard; he was expecting her 
to sheer off, until the last moment; then it flashed 
upon him that she was trying to run him down, mis- 
taking his lantern for the buoy light ; so he sang out, 
** Stand by to spring for the guard, men!" and the 
next instant the jump was made. 



zo6 



CHAPTER XIII 
A pilot's needs 

BUT I am wandering from what I was intending 
to do; that is, make plainer than perhaps ap- 
pears in the previous chapters some of the peculiar 
requirements of the science of piloting. First of all, 
there is one faculty which a pilot must incessantly 
cultivate tmtil he has brought it to absolute per- 
fection. Nothing short of perfection will do. That 
faculty is memory. He cannot stop with merely 
thinking a thing is so and so; he must know it; for 
this is eminently one of the "exact" sciences. With 
what scorn a pilot was looked upon, in the old times, 
if he ever ventured to deal in that feeble phrase 
"I think," instead of the vigorous one, "I know!" 
One cannot easily realize what a tremendous thing 
it is to know every trivial detail of twelve hundred 
miles of river and know it with absolute exactness. 
If you will take the longest street in New York, and 
travel up and down it, conning its features patiently 
until you know every house and window and lamp- 
post and big and little sign by heart, and know them 
so accurately that you can instantly name the one 
you are abreast of when you are set down at random 
in that street in the middle of an inky black night, 
you will then have a tolerable notion of the amotmt 

107 



MARK TWAIN 

and the exactness of a pilot's knowledge who carries 
the Mississippi River in his head. And then, if you 
will go on until you know every street-crossing, the 
character, size, and position of the crossing-stones, 
and the varying depth of mud in each of these num- 
berless places, you will have some idea of what the 
pilot must know in order to keep a Mississippi 
steamer out of trouble. Next, if you will take half 
of the signs in that long street, and change their places 
once a month, and still manage to know their new 
positions accurately on dark nights, and keep up 
with these repeated changes without making any 
mistakes, you will understand what is required of a 
pilot's peerless memory by the fickle Mississippi. 

I think a pilot's memory is about the most won- 
derful thing in the world. To know the Old and New 
Testaments by heart, and be able to recite them 
glibly, forward or backward, or begin at random any- 
where in the book and recite both ways and never 
trip or make a mistake, is no extravagant mass of 
knowledge, and no marvelous facility, compared to 
a pilot's massed knowledge of the Mississippi and his 
marvelous facility in the handling of it. I make this 
comparison deliberately, and believe I am not ex- 
panding the truth when I do it. Many will think 
my figure too strong, but pilots will not. 

And how easily and comfortably the pilot's mem- 
ory does its work; how placidly effortless is its way; 
how unconsciously it lays up its vast stores, hour by 
hour, day by day, and never loses or mislays a single 
valuable package of them all! Take an instance. 
Let a leadsman cry, "Half twain! half twain! half 

io8 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

twain! half twain! half twain!" until it becomes as 
monotonous as the ticking of a clock ; let conversation 
be going on all the time, and the pilot be doing his 
share of the talking, and no longer consciously listen- 
ing to the leadsman ; and in the midst of this endless 
string of half t wains let a single "quarter twain!'* 
be interjected, without emphasis, and then the half- 
twain cry go on again, just as before: two or three 
weeks later that pilot can describe with precision the 
boat's position in the river when that quarter twain 
was uttered, and give you such a lot of head-marks, 
stem-marks, and side-marks to guide you, that you 
ought to be able to take the boat there and put her 
in that same spot again yourself ! The cry of ' * quar- 
ter twain" did not really take his mind from his 
talk, but his trained faculties instantly photographed 
the bearings, noted the change of depth, and laid 
up the important details for future reference without 
requiring any assistance from him in the matter. If 
you were walking and talking with a friend, and 
another friend at your side kept up a monotonous 
repetition of the vowel sound A, for a couple of 
blocks, and then in the midst interjected an R, thus, 
A, A, A, A, A, R, A, A, A, etc., and gave the R no 
emphasis, you would not be able to state, two or 
three weeks afterward, that the R had been put in, 
nor be able to tell what objects you were passing 
at the moment it was done. But you could if your 
memory had been patiently and laboriously trained 
to do that sort of thing mechanically. 

Give a man a tolerably fair memory to start with, 
and piloting will develop it into a very colossus of 

109 



MARK TWAIN 

capability. But only in the matters it is daily drilled 
in. A time would come when the man's faculties 
could not help noticing landmarks and soundings, 
and his memory could not help holding on to them 
with the grip of a vise; but if you asked that same 
man at noon what he had had for breakfast, it would 
be ten chances to one that he could not tell you. 
Astonishing things can be done with the human 
memory if you will devote it faithfully to one par- 
ticular line of business. 

At the time that wages soared so high on the 
Missouri River, my chief, Mr. Bixby, went up there 
and learned more than a thousand miles of that 
stream with an ease and rapidity that were astonish- 
ing. When he had seen each division once in the day- 
time and once at night, his education was so nearly 
complete that he took out a "daylight" license; a 
few trips later he took out a full license, and went 
to piloting day and night — and he ranked A i, too. 

Mr. Bixby placed me as steersman for a while 
under a pilot whose feats of memory were a constant 
marvel to me. However, his memory was bom in 
him, I think, not built. For instance, somebody 
would mention a name. Instantly Mr. Brown would 
break in : 

*'0h, I knew him. Sallow-faced, red-headed fel- 
low, with a little scar on the side of his throat, like a 
splinter vmder the flesh. He was only in the South- 
em trade six months. That was thirteen years ago. 
I made a trip with him. There was five feet in the 
upper river then; the Henry Blake grotinded at the 
foot of Tower Island drawing four and a half; the 

no 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

George Elliott unshipped her rudder on the wreck of 

the Sunflower — " 

"Why, the Sunflower didn't sink until — " 
"7 know when she sunk; it was three years before 
that, on the 2d of December; Asa Hardy was cap- 
tain of her, and his brother John was first clerk ; and 
it was his first trip in her, too; Tom Jones told me 
these things a week afterward in New Orleans; he 
was first mate of the Sunflower. Captain Hardy 
stuck a nail in his foot the 6th of July of the next 
year, and died of the lockjaw on the 15th. His 
brother John died two years after — 3d of March — 
erysipelas. I never saw either of the Hardy s — they 
were Alleghany River men — but people who knew 
them told me all these things. And they said Cap- 
tain Hardy wore yarn socks winter and summer just 
the same, and his first wife's name was Jane Shook — 
she was from New England — and his second one 
died in a lunatic asylum. It was in the blood. She 
was from Lexington, Kentucky. Name was Horton 
before she was married." 

And so on, by the hour, the man's tongue would 
go. He could not forget anything. It was simply 
impossible. The most trivial details remained as 
distinct and limiinous in his head, after they had 
lain there for years, as the most memorable events. 
His was not simply a pilot's memory; its grasp was 
imiversal. It he were talking about a trifling letter 
he had received seven years before, he was pretty 
sure to deliver you the entire screed from memory. 
And then, without observing that he was departing 
from the true line of his talk, he was more than likely 

III 



MARK TWAIN 

to hurl in a long-drawn parenthetical biography of 
the writer of that letter; and you were lucky indeed 
if he did not take up that writer's relatives, one by 
one, and give you their biographies, too. 

Such a memory as that is a great misfortune. To 
it, all occurrences are of the same size. Its possessor 
cannot distinguish an interesting circumstance from 
an uninteresting one. As a talker, he is bound to 
clog his narrative with tiresome details and make 
himself an insufferable bore. Moreover, he cannot 
stick to his subject. He picks up every little grain 
of memory he discerns in his way, and so is led aside. 
Mr. Brown would start out with the honest intention 
of telling you a vastly funny anecdote about a dog. 
He would be "so full of laugh" that he could hardly 
begin; then his memory would start with the dog's 
breed and personal appearance; drift into a history 
of his owner ; of his owner's family, with descriptions 
of weddings and burials that had occurred in it, 
together with recitals of congratulatory verses and 
obituary poetry provoked by the same; then this 
memory would recollect that one of these events oc- 
curred during the celebrated "hard winter" of such- 
and-such a year, and a minute description of that 
winter would follow, along with the names of people 
who were frozen to death, and statistics showing the 
high figures which pork and hay went up to. Pork 
and hay would suggest com and fodder; com and 
fodder would suggest cows and horses; cows and 
horses would suggest the circus and certain cele- 
brated bare-back riders; the transition from the 
circus to the menagerie was easy and natural; from 

112 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

the elephant to equatorial Africa was but a step ; then 
of course the heathen savages would suggest religion ; 
and at the end of three or four hours' tedious jaw, 
the watch would change, and Brown would go out 
of the pilot-house muttering extracts from sermons 
he had heard years before about the efficacy of 
prayer as a means of grace. And the original first 
mention would be all you had learned about that 
dog, after all this waiting and himgering. 

A pilot must have a memory; but there are two 
higher qualities which he must also have. He must 
have good and quick judgment and decision, and a 
cool, calm courage that no peril can shake. Give 
a man the merest trifle of pluck to start with, and by 
the time he has become a pilot he cannot be un- 
manned by any danger a steamboat can get into; 
but one cannot quite say the same for judgment. 
Judgment is a matter of brains, and a man must 
start with a good stock of that article or he will never 
succeed as a pilot. 

The growth of courage in the pilot-house is steady 
all the time, but it does not reach a high and satis- 
factory condition until some time after the young 
pilot has been ** standing his own watch" alone and 
imder the staggering weight of all the responsibilities 
connected with the position. When the apprentice 
has become pretty thoroughly acquainted with the 
river, he goes clattering along so fearlessly with his 
steamboat, night or day, that he presently begins to 
imagine that it is his courage that animates him ; but 
the first time the pilot steps out and leaves him to his 
own devices he finds out it was the other man's. 

113 



MARK TWAIN 

He discovers that the article has been left out of his 
own cargo altogether. The whole river is bristling 
with exigencies in a moment; he is not prepared for 
them; he does not know how to meet them; all his 
knowledge forsakes him; and within fifteen minutes 
he is as white as a sheet and scared almost to death. 
Therefore pilots wisely train these cubs by various 
strategic tricks to look danger in the face a little 
more calmly. A favorite way of theirs is to play a 
friendly swindle upon the candidate. 

Mr. Bixby served me in this fashion once, and for 
years afterward I used to blush, even in my sleep, 
when I thought of it. I had become a good steers- 
man; so good, indeed, that I had all the work to do 
on our watch, night and day. Mr. Bixby seldom 
made a suggestion to me ; all he ever did was to take 
the wheel on particularly bad nights or in particu- 
larly bad crossings, land the boat when she needed 
to be landed, play gentleman of leisure nine-tenths 
of the watch, and collect the wages. The lower river 
was about bank-full, and if anybody had questioned 
my ability to run any crossing between Cairo and 
New Orleans without help or instruction, I should 
have felt irreparably hurt. The idea of being afraid 
of any crossing in the lot, in the daytime ^ was a thing 
too preposterous for contemplation. Well, one 
matchless summer's day I was bowling down the 
bend above Island 66, brimful of self-conceit and 
carrying my nose as high as a giraffe's, when Mr. 
Bixby said: 

"I am going below awhile. I suppose you know 
the next crossing?" 

114 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

This was almost an affront. It was about the 
plainest and simplest crossing in the whole river. 
One couldn't come to any harm, whether he ran it 
right or not ; and as for depth, there never had been 
any bottom there. I knew all this, perfectly well. 

"Know how to run it? Why, I can run it with 
my eyes shut." 

"How much water is there in it?" 

"Well, that is an odd question. I couldn't get 
bottom there with a church steeple." 

"You think so, do you?" 

The very tone of the question shook my con- 
fidence. That was what Mr. Bixby was expecting. 
He left, without saying anything more. I began to 
imagine all sorts of things. Mr. Bixby, imknown to 
me, of course, sent somebody down to the forecastle 
with some mysterious instructions to the leadsmen, 
another messenger was sent to whisper among the 
officers, and then Mr. Bixby went into hiding behind 
a smoke-stack where he could observe results. Pres- 
ently the captain stepped out on the hurricane-deck; 
next the chief mate appeared; then a clerk. Every 
moment or two a straggler was added to my audience ; 
and before I got to the head of the island I had 
fifteen or twenty people assembled down there under 
my nose. I began to wonder what the trouble was. 
As I started across, the captain glanced aloft at me 
and said, with a sham uneasiness in his voice: 

"Where is Mr. Bixby?" 

"Gone below, sir." 

But that did the business for me. My imagina- 
tion began to construct dangers out of nothing, and 

"5 



MARK TWAIN 

they multiplied faster than I could keep the run of 
them. All at once I imagined I saw shoal water 
ahead! The wave of coward agony that surged 
through me then came near dislocating every joint 
in me. All my confidence in that crossing vanished. 
I seized the bell-rope; dropped it, ashamed; seized 
it again; dropped it once more; clutched it trem- 
blingly once again, and pulled it so feebly that I 
could hardly hear the stroke myself. Captain and 
mate sang out instantly, and both together: 

''Starboard lead there! and quick about it!'* 

This was another shock. I began to climb the 
wheel like a squirrel; but I would hardly get the 
boat started to port before I would see new dangers 
on that side, and away I would spin to the other; 
only to find perils accumulating to starboard, and 
be crazy to get to port again. Then came the leads- 
man's sepulchral cry: 

"D-e-e-pfour!" 

Deep four in a bottomless crossing ! The terror of 
it took my breath away. 

"M-a-r-k three! M-a-r-k three! Quarter-less- 
three! Half twain!" 

This was frightful! I seized the bell-ropes and 
stopped the engines. 

''Quarter twain! Quarter twain! Mark twain!" 

I was helpless. I did not know what in the world 
to do. I was quaking from head to foot, and I could 
have hung my hat on my eyes, they stuck out so far. 

' ' Quarter-^e55-t wain ! Nine-and-a-/?a/// ' ' 

We were drawing nine! My hands were in a 
nerveless flutter. I could not ring a bell intelligibly 

ii6 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

with them. I flew to the speaking-tube and shouted 
to the engineer: 

* ' Oh, Ben, if you love me, back her ! Quick, Ben ! 
Oh, back the immortal soul out of her!" 

I heard the door close gently. I looked around, 
and there stood Mr. Bixby, smiling a bland, sweet 
smile. Then the audience on the hurricane - deck 
sent up a thimdergust of humiliating laughter. I 
saw it all, now, and I felt meaner than the meanest 
man in human history. I laid in the lead, set the 
boat in her marks, came ahead on the engines, and 
said: 

"It was a fine trick to play on an orphan, wasn't 
it? It suppose I'll never hear the last of how I was 
ass enough to heave the lead at the head of 66." 

''Well, no, you won't, maybe. In fact I hope you 
won't; for I want you to learn something by that 
experience. Didn't you know there was no bottom 
in that crossing?" 

"Yes, sir, I did." 

"Very well, then. You shouldn't have allowed 
me or anybody else to shake your confidence in that 
knowledge. Try to remember that. And another 
thing: when you get into a dangerous place, don't 
turn coward. That isn't going to help matters any." 

It was a good enough lesson, but pretty hardly 
learned. Yet about the hardest part of it was that 
for months I so often had to hear a phrase which I 
had conceived a particular distaste for. It was, 
"Oh, Ben, if you love me, back her!" 

117 



CHAPTER XIV 

RANK AND DIGNITY OF PILOTING 

IN my preceding chapters I have tried, by going 
into the minutiae of the science of piloting, to 
cany the reader step by step to a comprehension of 
what the science consists of; and at the same time 
I have tried to show him that it is a very curious 
and wonderful science, too, and very worthy of his 
attention. If I have seemed to love my subject, it 
is no surprising thing, for I loved the profession far 
better than any I have followed since, and I took a 
measureless pride in it. The reason is plain: a pilot, 
in those days, was the only unfettered and entirely 
independent human being that lived in the earth. 
Kings are but the hampered servants of parliament 
and the people; parliaments sit in chains forged by 
their constituency; the editor of a newspaper can- 
not be independent, but must work with one hand 
tied behind him by party and patrons, and be con- 
tent to utter only half or two-thirds of his mind; 
no clergyman is a free man and may speak the whole 
truth, regardless of his parish's opinions; writers of 
all kinds are manacled servants of the public. We 
write frankly and fearlessly, but then we "modify" 
before we print. In truth, every man and woman 
and child has a master, and worries and frets in 

ii8 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

servitude; but, in the day I write of, the Mississippi 
pilot had none. The captain could stand upon the 
hurricane-deck, in the pomp of a very brief authority, 
and give him five or six orders while the vessel 
backed into the stream, and then that skipper's 
reign was over. The moment that the boat was 
under way in the river, she was under the sole and 
unquestioned control of the pilot. He could do with 
her exactly as he pleased, nm her when and whither 
he chose, and tie her up to the bank whenever his 
judgment said that that course was best. His move- 
ments were entirely free; he consulted no one, he 
received commands from nobody, he promptly re- 
sented even the merest suggestions. Indeed, the law 
of the United States forbade him to listen to com- 
mands or suggestions, rightly considering that the 
pilot necessarily knew better how to handle the boat 
than anybody could tell him. So here was the 
novelty of a king without a keeper, an absolute mon- 
arch who was absolute in sober truth and not by a 
fiction of words. I have seen a boy of eighteen 
taking a great steamer serenely into what seemed 
almost certain destruction, and the aged captain 
standing mutely by, filled with apprehension but 
powerless to interfere. His interference, in that 
particular instance, might have been an excellent 
thing, but to permit it would have been to establish 
a most pernicious precedent. It will easily be 
guessed, considering the pilot's boundless authority, 
that he was a great personage in the old steamboat- 
ing days. He was treated with marked courtesy by 
the captain and with marked deference by all the 

119 



MARK TWAIN 

officers and servants; and this deferential spirit was 
quickly commtinicated to the passengers, too. I 
think pilots were about the only people I ever knew 
who failed to show, in some degree, embarrassment 
in the presence of traveling foreign princes. But 
then, people in one's own grade of life are not usually 
embarrassing objects. 

By long habit, pilots came to put all their wishes 
in the form of commands. It ''gravels" me, to this 
day, to put my will in the weak shape of a request, 
instead of launching it in the crisp language of an 
order. 

In those old days, to load a steamboat at St. Louis, 
take her to New Orleans and back, and discharge 
cargo, consumed about twenty-five days, on an 
average. Seven or eight of these days the boat 
spent at the wharves of St. Louis and New Orleans, 
and every soul on board was hard at work, except 
the two pilots ; they did nothing but play gentleman 
up-town, and receive the same wages for it as if they 
had been on duty. The moment the boat touched 
the wharf at either city they were ashore; and they 
were not likely to be seen again till the last bell was 
ringing and everything in readiness for another voyage. 

When a captain got hold of a pilot of particularly 
high reputation, he took pains to keep him. When 
wages were four hundred dollars a month on the 
Upper Mississippi, I have known a captain to keep 
such a pilot in idleness, under full pay, three months 
at a time, while the river was frozen up. And one 
must remember that in those cheap times four htm- 
dred dollars was a salary of alm.ost inconceivable 

I20 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

splendor. Few men on shore got such pay as that, 
and when they did they were mightily looked up to. 
When pilots from either end of the river w^andered 
into our small Missouri village, they were sought by 
the best and the fairest, and treated with exalted 
respect. Lying in port under wages was a thing 
which many pilots greatly enjoyed and appreciated; 
especially if they belonged in the Missouri River in 
the heyday of that trade (Kansas times), and got 
nine himdred dollars a trip, which was equivalent to 
about eighteen hundred dollars a month. Here is a 
conversation of that day. A chap out of the Illinois 
River, with a little stem- wheel tub, accosts a couple 
of ornate and gilded Missouri River pilots: 

"Gentlemen, I've got a pretty good trip for the 
up-country, and shall want you about a month. 
How much will it be?" 

"Eighteen hundred dollars apiece.'* 

"Heavens and earth! You take my boat, let me 
have your wages, and I'll divide!" 

I will remark, in passing, that Mississippi steam- 
boatmen were important in landsmen's eyes (and in 
their own, too, in a degree) according to the dignity 
of the boat they were on. For instance, it was a 
proud thing to be of the crew of such stately craft 
as the Aleck Scott or the Grand Turk. Negro firemen, 
deck-hands, and barbers belonging to those boats 
were distinguished personages in their grade of life, 
and they were well aware of that fact, too. A stal- 
wart darky once gave offense at a negro ball in New 
Orleans by putting on a good many airs. Finally 
one of the managers bustled up to him and said : 

121 



MARK TWAIN 

**Who is you, anyway? Who is you? dat's what 
/ wants to know!" 

The offender was not disconcerted in the least, 
but swelled himself up and threw that into his voice 
which showed that he knew he was not putting on all 
those airs on a stinted capital. 

"Who is 1? Who is 1? I let you know mighty 
quick who I is! I want you niggers to understan* 
dat I fires de middle do'^ on de Aleck Scott!'' 

That was sufficient. 

The barber of the Grand Turk was a spruce young 
negro, who aired his importance with balmy com- 
placency, and was greatly courted by the circle in 
which he moved. The young colored population of 
New Orleans were much given to flirting, at twilight, 
on the banquettes of the back streets. Somebody 
saw and heard something like the following, one 
evening, in one of those localities. A middle-aged 
negro woman projected her head through a broken 
pane and shouted (very willing that the neighbors 
should hear and envy), ''You Mary Ann, come in de 
house dis minute ! Stannin' out dah foolin* 'long wid 
dat low trash, an' heah's de barber oif'n de Gran' 
Turk wants to conwerse wid you!" 

My reference, a moment ago, to the fact that a 
pilot's peculiar official position placed him out of the 
reach of criticism or command, brings Stephen W. 
naturally to my mind. He was a gifted pilot, a good 
fellow, a tireless talker, and had both wit and humor 
in him. He had a most irreverent independence, 
too, and was deliciously easy-going and comfortable 

» Door. 

122 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

in the presence of age, official dignity, and even the 
most august wealth. He always had work, he never 
saved a penny, he was a most persuasive borrower, 
he was in debt to every pilot on the river, and to 
the majority of the captains. He could throw a sort 
of splendor around a bit of harum-scarum, devil- 
may-care piloting, that made it almost fascinating — 
but not to everybody. He made a trip with good 
old Captain Y. once, and was ''relieved" from duty 
when the boat got to New Orleans. Somebody ex- 
pressed surprise at the discharge. Captain Y. shud- 
dered at the mere mention of Stephen. Then his 
poor, thin old voice piped out something like this: 
''Why, bless me! I wouldn't have such a wild 
creature on my boat for the world — ^not for the 
whole world! He swears, he sings, he whistles, he 
yells — I never saw such an Injun to yell. All times 
of the night — it never made any difference to him. 
He would just yell that way, not for anything in 
particular, but merely on account of a kind of devilish 
comfort he got out of it. I never could get into a 
sound sleep but he would fetch me out of bed, all in 
a cold sweat, with one of those dreadful war-whoops. 
A queer being — ^very queer being; no respect for 
anything or anybody. Sometimes he called me 
'Johnny,' And he kept a fiddle and a cat. He 
played execrably. This seemed to distress the cat, 
and so the cat would howl. Nobody could sleep 
where that man — and his family — was. And reck- 
less? There never was an3rthing like it. Now you 
may believe it or not, but as sure as I am sitting 
here, he brought my boat a-tilting down through 

123 



MARK TWAIN 

those awful snags at Chicot under a rattHng head of 
steam, and the wind a-blowing like the very nation, 
at that ! My officers will tell you so. They saw it. 
And, sir, while he was a-tearing right down through 
those snags, and I a-shaking in my shoes and pray- 
ing, I wish I may never speak again if he didn't 
pucker up his mouth and go to whistling! Yes, sir; 
whistling 'Buffalo gals, can't you come out to-night, 
can't you come out to-night, can't you come out to- 
night ' ; and doing it as calmly as if we were attending 
a funeral and weren't related to the corpse. And 
when I remonstrated with him about it, he smiled 
down on me as if I was his child, and told me to run 
in the house and try to be good, and not be meddling 
with my superiors!"^ 

Once a pretty mean captain caught Stephen in 
New Orleans out of work and as usual out of money. 
He laid steady siege to Stephen, who was in a very 
** close place," and finally persuaded him to hire with 
him at one hundred and twenty-five dollars per 
month, just half wages, the captain agreeing not to 
divulge the secret and so bring down the contempt 
of all the guild upon the poor fellow. But the boat 
was not more than a day out of New Orleans before 
Stephen discovered that the captain was boasting of 
his exploit, and that all the officers had been told. 
Stephen winced, but said nothing. About the mid- 
dle of the afternoon the captain stepped out on the 
hurricane-deck, cast his eye around, and looked a 

* Considering a captain's ostentatious but hollow chieftainship, and 
a pilot's real authority, there was something impudently apt and 
happy about that way of phrasing it. 

124 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

good deal surprised. He glanced inquiringly aloft 
at Stephen, but Stephen was whistling placidly and 
attending to business. The captain stood around 
awhile in evident discomfort, and once or twice 
seemed about to make a suggestion; but the eti- 
quette of the river taught him to avoid that sort 
of rashness, and so he managed to hold his peace. 
He chafed and puzzled a few minutes longer, then 
retired to his apartments. But soon he was out 
again, and apparently more perplexed than ever. 
Presently he ventured to remark, with deference: 

** Pretty good stage of the river now, ain't it, sir?'* 

''Well, I should say so! Bank-full is a pretty 
liberal stage." 

"Seems to be a good deal of current here." 

"Good deal don't describe it! It's worse than a 
mill-race." 

' ' Isn't it easier in toward shore than it is out here 
in the middle?" 

"Yes, I reckon it is; but a body can't be too care- 
ful with a steamboat. It's pretty safe out here ; can't 
strike any bottom here, you can depend on that.'* 

The captain departed, looking rueful enough. At 
this rate, he would probably die of old age before 
his boat got to St. Louis. Next day he appeared on 
deck and again found Stephen faithfully standing up 
the middle of the river, fighting the whole vast force 
of the Mississippi, and whistling the same placid 
tune. This thing was becoming serious. In by the 
shore was a slower boat cHpping along in the easy 
water and gaining steadily; she began to make for 
an island chute; Stephen stuck to the middle of 

125 



MARK TWAIN 

the river. Speech was wrung from the captain. He 
said: 

"Mr. W., don't that chute cut off a good deal of 
distance?" 

"I think it does, but I don't know.*' 

"Don't know! Well, isn't there water enough in 
it now to go through?" 

"I expect there is, but I am not certain." 

"Upon my word this is odd! Why, those pilots 
on that boat yonder are going to try it. Do you 
mean to say that you don't know as much as they 
do?" 

"They! Why, they are two -hundred -and -fifty- 
dollar pilots! But don't you be uneasy; I know as 
much as any man can afTord to know for a hundred 
and twenty-five!" 

The captain surrendered. 

Five nfinutes later Stephen was bowling through 
the chute and showing the rival boat a two-hundred- 
and-fifty-dollar pair of heels. 



126 



CHAPTER XV 

THE pilots' monopoly 

ONE day, on board the Aleck Scott, my chief, Mr. 
Bixby, was crawling carefully through a close 
place at Cat Island, both leads going, and everybody 
holding his breath. The captain, a nervous, appre- 
hensive man, kept still as long as he could, but finally 
broke down and shouted from the hurricane-deck : 

"For gracious' sake, give her steam, Mr. Bixby! 
give her steam! She'll never raise the reef on this 
headway!" 

For all the effect that was produced upon Mr. 
Bixby, one would have supposed that no remark had 
been made. But five minutes later, when the danger 
was past and the leads laid in, he burst instantly into 
a consuming fury, and gave the captain the most 
admirable cursing I ever listened to. No bloodshed 
ensued, but that was because the captain's cause was 
weak, for ordinarily he was not a man to take cor- 
rection quietly. 

Having now set forth in detail the nature of the 
science of piloting, and likewise described the rank 
which the pilot held among the fraternity of steam- 
boatmen, this seems a fitting place to say a few 
words about an organization which the pilots once 
formed for the protection of their guild. It was 

127 



MARK TWAIN 

curious and noteworthy in this, that it was perhaps 
the compactest, the completest, and the strongest 
commercial organization ever formed among men. 

For a long time wages had been two hundred and 
fifty dollars a month ; but curiously enough, as steam- 
boats multiplied and business increased, the wages 
began to fall little by little. It was easy to discover 
the reason of this. Too many pilots were being 
"made." It was nice to have a *'cub," a steersman, 
to do all the hard work for a couple of years, gratis, 
while his master sat on a high bench and smoked; 
all pilots and captains had sons or nephews who 
wanted to be pilots. By and by it came to pass that 
nearly every pilot on the river had a steersman. 
When a steersman had made an amoimt of progress 
that was satisfactory to any two pilots in the trade, 
they could get a pilot's license for him by signing an 
application directed to the United States Inspector. 
Nothing further was needed; usually no questions 
were asked, no proofs of capacity required. 

Very well, this growing swarm of new pilots pres- 
ently began to undermine the wages in order to get 
berths. Too late — apparently — the knights of the 
tiller perceived their mistake. Plainly, something 
had to be done, and quickly, but what was to be 
the needful thing? A close organization. Nothing 
else would answer. To compass this seemed an im- 
possibility; so it was talked and talked and then 
dropped. It was too likely to ruin whoever ven- 
ttired to move in the matter. But at last about a 
dozen of the boldest — and some of them the best — 
pilots on the river launched themselves into the 

128 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

enterprise and took all the chances. They got a 
special charter from the legislature, with large pow- 
ers, under the name of the Pilots' Benevolent Asso- 
ciation ; elected their officers, completed their organi- 
zation, contributed capital, put ' * assocation " wages 
up to two himdred and fifty dollars at once — and 
then retired to their homes, for they were promptly 
discharged from employment. But there were two 
or three unnoticed trifles in their by-laws which had 
the seeds of propagation in them. For instance, all 
idle members of the association, in good standing, 
were entitled to a pension of twenty-five dollars per 
month. This began to bring in one straggler after 
another from the ranks of the new-fledged pilots, 
in the dull (summer) season. Better have twenty- 
five dollars than starve; the initiation fee was only 
twelve dollars, and no dues required from the un- 
employed. 

Also, the widows of deceased members in good 
standing could draw twenty-five dollars per month, 
and a certain sum for each of their children. Also, 
the said deceased would be buried at the association's 
expense. These things resurrected all the superan- 
nuated and forgotten pilots in the Mississippi Valley. 
They came from farms, they came from interior 
villages, they came from everywhere. They came on 
crutches, on drays, in ambiilances — any way, so they 
got there. They paid in their twelve doUars, and 
straightway began to draw out twenty-five doUars a 
month and calculate their burial bills. 

By and by all the useless, helpless pilots, and a 
dozen first-class ones, were in the association, and 

129 



MARK TWAIN 

nine-tenths of the best pilots out of it and laughing 
at it. It was the laughing-stock of the whole river. 
Everybody joked about the by-law requiring mem- 
bers to pay ten per cent, of their wages, every month, 
into the treasury for the support of the association, 
whereas all the members were outcast and tabooed, 
and no one would employ them. Everybody was 
derisively grateful to the association for taking all the 
worthless pilots out of the way and leaving the 
whole field to the excellent and the deserving; and 
everybody was not only jocularly grateful for that, 
but for a result which naturally followed, namely, the 
gradual advance of wages as the busy season ap- 
proached. Wages had gone up from the low figure 
of one hundred dollars a month to one hundred and 
twenty-five, and in some cases to one hundred and 
fifty; and it was great fun to enlarge upon the fact 
that this charming thing had been accomplished by 
a body of men not one of whom received a particle 
of benefit from it. Some of the jokers used to call 
at the association-rooms and have a good time chaf- 
fing the members and offering them the charity of 
taking them as steersmen for a trip, so that they 
could see what the forgotten river looked like. 
However, the association was content; or at least 
gave no sign to the contrary. Now and then it 
captured a pilot who was "out of luck," and added 
him to its list; and these later additions were very 
valuable, for they were good pilots ; the incompetent 
ones had all been absorbed before. As business 
freshened, wages climbed gradually up to two hun- 
dred and fifty dollars — the association figure — and 

130 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

became firmly fixed there; and still without bene- 
fiting a member of that body, for no member was 
hired. The hilarity at the association's expense 
burst all bounds, now. There was no end to the 
fun which that poor martyr had to put up with. 

However, it is a long lane that has no turning. 
Winter approached, business doubled and trebled, 
and an avalanche of Missouri, Illinois, and Upper 
Mississippi boats came pouring down to take a chance 
in the New Orleans trade. All of a sudden pilots 
were in great demand, and were correspondingly 
scarce. The time for revenge was come. It was a 
bitter pill to have to accept association pilots at last, 
yet captains and owners agreed that there was no 
other way. But none of these outcasts offered ! So 
there was a still bitterer pill to be swallowed: they 
must be sought out and asked for their services. 

Captain was the first man who found it neces- 

S3,ry to take the dose, and he had been the loudest 
derider of the organization. He hunted up one of the 
best of the association pilots and said : 

**Well, you boys have rather got the best of us for 
a little while, so I'll give in with as good a grace as 
I can. I've come to hire you; get your trunk aboard 
right away. I want to leave at twelve o'clock." 

"I don't know about that. Who is your other 
pilot?" 

'T'vegot I. S. Why?" 

*'I can't go with him. He don't belong to the 
association." 

"What?" 

*'It's so." 

131 



MARK TWAIN 

*'Do you mean to tell me that you won*t turn a 
wheel with one of the very best and oldest pilots on 
the river because he don't belong to your associa- 
tion?" 

^^Yes, I do." 

"Well, if this isn't putting on airs! I supposed I 
was doing you a benevolence; but I begin to think 
that I am the party that wants a favor done. Are 
you acting under a law of the concern?" 

"Yes." 

"Show it tome." 

So they stepped into the association-rooms, and 
the secretary soon satisfied the captain, who said: 

"Well, what am I to do? I have hired Mr. S. for 
the entire season." 

"I will provide for you," said the secretary. "I 
will detail a pilot to go with you, and he shall be on 
board at twelve o'clock." 

"But if I discharge S., he will come on m.e for the 
whole season's wages." 

"Of course that is a matter between you and Mr. 
S., captain. We cannot meddle in your private 
affairs." 

The captain stormed, but to no purpose. In the 
end he had to discharge S., pay him about a thousand 
dollars, and take an association pilot in his place. 
The laugh was beginning to turn the other way, now. 
Every day, thenceforward, a new victim fell; every 
day some outraged captain discharged a non-asso- 
ciation pet, with tears and profanity, and installed a 
hated association man in his berth. In a very little 
while idle non-associationists began to be pretty 

132 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

plenty, brisk as business was, and much as their 
services were desired. The laugh was shifting to the 
other side of their mouths most palpably. These 
victims, together with the captains and owners, 
presently ceased to laugh altogether, and began to 
rage about the revenge they would take when the 
passing business *' spurt" was over. 

Soon all the laughers that were left were the 
owners and crews of boats that had two non-associa- 
tion pilots. But their triumph was not very long- 
lived. For this reason: It was a rigid rule of the 
association that its members should never, under any 
circumstances whatever, give information about the 
channel to any "outsider." By this time about half 
the boats had none but association pilots, and the 
other half had none but outsiders. At the first 
glance one would suppose that when it came to for- 
bidding information about the river these two parties 
could play equally at that game ; but this was not so. 
At every good-sized town from one end of the river 
to the other, there was a *' wharf -boat " to land at, 
instead of a wharf or a pier. Freight was stored in 
it for transportation; waiting passengers slept in its 
cabins. Upon each of these wharf-boats the asso- 
ciation's officers placed a strong box, fastened with a 
peculiar lock which was used in no other service but 
one — the United States mail service. It was the 
letter-bag lock, a sacred governmental thing. By 
dint of much beseeching the government had been 
persuaded to allow the association to use this lock. 
Every association man carried a key which would 
open these boxes. That key, or rather a peculiar 

133 



MARK TWx\IN 

way of holding it in the hand when its owner was 
asked for river information by a stranger — for the 
success of the St. Louis and New Orleans association 
had now bred tolerably thriving branches in a dozen 
neighboring steamboat trades — was the association 
man's sign and diploma of membership; and if the 
stranger did not respond by producing a similar key, 
and holding it in a certain manner duly prescribed, 
his question was poHtely ignored. 

From the association's secretary each member 
received a package of more or less gorgeous blanks, 
printed like a billhead, on handsome paper, properly 
ruled in columns; a billhead worded something like 

this: 

STEAMER GREAT REPUBLIC. 

John Smith, Master. 

Pilots, John Jones and Thomas Brown. 



Crossings. 



Soundings. 



Marks. 



Remarks. 



These blanks were filled up, day by day, as the 
voyage progressed, and deposited in the several 
wharf -boat boxes. For instance, as soon as the first 
crossing out from St. Louis was completed, the items 
would be entered upon the blank, under the appro- 
priate headings, thus : 

''St. Louis. Nine and a half (feet). Stem on 
courthouse, head on dead cottonwood above wood- 
yard, until you raise the first reef, then pull up 
square." Then imder head of remarks: "Go just 
outside the wrecks ; this is important. New snag just 
where you straighten down; go above it." 

134 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

The pilot who deposited that blank in the Cairo 
box (after adding to it the details of every crossing 
all the way down from St. Louis) took out and read 
half a dozen fresh reports (from upward-bound 
steamers) concerning the river between Cairo and 
Memphis, posted himself thoroughly, returned them 
to the box, and went back aboard his boat again so 
armed against accident that he could not possibly 
get his boat into trouble without bringing the most 
ingenious carelessness to his aid. 

Imagine the benefits of so admirable a system in 
a piece of river twelve or thirteen hundred miles 
long, whose channel was shifting every day! The 
pilot who had formerly been obliged to put up with 
seeing a shoal place once or possibly twice a month, 
had a hundred sharp eyes to watch it for him now, 
and bushels of intelligent brains to tell him how to 
run it. His information about it was seldom twenty- 
four hours old. If the reports in the last box chanced 
to leave any misgivings on his mind concerning a 
treacherous crossing, he had his remedy ; he blew his 
steam-whistle in a peculiar way as soon as he saw a 
boat approaching; the signal was answered in a 
peculiar way if that boat's pilots were association 
men ; and then the two steamers ranged alongside and 
all uncertainties were swept away by fresh infor- 
mation furnished to the inquirer by word of mouth 
and in minute detail. 

The first thing a pilot did when he reached New 
Orleans or St. Louis was to take his final and elabo- 
rate report to the association parlors and hang it 
up there — after which he was free to visit his family. 

135 



MARK TWAIN 

In these parlors a crowd was always gathered to- 
gether, discussing changes in the channel, and the 
moment there was a fresh arrival everybody stopped 
talking till this witness had told the newest news 
and settled the latest uncertainty. Other craftsmen 
can ''sink the shop" sometimes, and interest them- 
selves in other matters. Not so with a pilot; he 
must devote himself wholly to his profession and talk 
of nothing else; for it would be small gain to be 
perfect one day and imperfect the next. He has no 
time or words to waste if he would keep "posted." 

But the outsiders had a hard time of it. No par- 
ticular place to meet and exchange information, no 
wharf -boat reports, none but chance and unsatis- 
factory ways of getting news. The consequence was 
that a man sometimes had to run five hundred miles 
of river on information that was a week or ten days 
old. At a fair stage of the river that might have 
answered, but when the dead low water came it was 
destructive. 

Now came another perfectly logical result. The 
outsiders began to ground steamboats, sink them, 
and get into all sorts of trouble, whereas accidents 
seemed to keep entirely away from the association 
men. Wherefore even the owners and captains of 
boats furnished exclusively with outsiders, and pre- 
viously considered to be wholly independent of the 
association and free to comfort themselves with brag 
and laughter, began to feel pretty uncomfortable. 
Still, they made a show of keeping up the brag, 
until one black day when every captain of the lot 
was formally ordered to immediately discharge his 

136 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

outsiders and take association pilots in their stead. 
And who was it that had the dashing presumption 
to do that ? Alas ! it came from a power behind the 
throne that was greater than the throne itself. It 
was the underwriters ! 

It was no time to "swap knives." Every out- 
sider had to take his trunk ashore at once. Of course 
it was supposed that there was collusion between the 
association and the underwriters, but this was not 
so. The latter had come to comprehend the excel- 
lence of the ** report" system of the association and 
the safety it secured, and so they had made their 
decision among themselves and upon plain business 
principles. 

There was weeping and wailing and gnashing of 
teeth in the camp of the outsiders now. But no 
matter, there was but one course for them to pursue, 
and they pursued it. They came forward in couples 
and groups, and proffered their twelve dollars and 
asked for membership. They were surprised to learn 
that several new by-laws had been long ago added. 
For instance, the initiation fee had been raised to 
fifty dollars; that sum must be tendered, and also 
ten per cent, of the wages which the applicant had 
received each and every month since the founding of 
the association. In many cases this amounted to 
three or four hundred dollars. Still, the association 
would not entertain the application until the money 
was present. Even then a single adverse vote killed 
the application. Every member had to vote yes or 
no in person and before witnesses; so it took weeks 
to decide a candidacy, because many pilots were so 

137 



MARK TWAIN 

long absent on voyages. However, the repentant 
sinners scraped their savings together, and one by 
one, by our tedious voting process, they were added 
to the fold. A time came, at last, when only about 
ten remained outside. They said they would starve 
before they would apply. They remained idle a long 
while, because of course nobody could venture to 
employ them. 

By and by the association published the fact that 
upon a certain date the wages would be raised to five 
hundred dollars per month. All the branch associa- 
tions had grown strong now, and the Red River one 
had advanced wages to seven hundred dollars a 
month. Reluctantly the ten outsiders yielded, in 
view of these things, and made application. There 
was another new by-law, by this time, which required 
them to pay dues not only on all the wages they had 
received since the association was bom, but also on 
what they would have received if they had continued 
at work up to the time of their application, instead of 
going off to pout in idleness. It turned out to be a 
difficult matter to elect them, but it was accomplished 
at last. The most virulent sinner of this batch had 
stayed out and allowed ' * dues " to accumulate against 
him so long that he had to send in six hundred and 
twenty-five dollars with his application. 

The association had a good bank-account now and 
was very strong. There was no longer an outsider. 
A by-law was added forbidding the reception of any 
more cubs or apprentices for five years; after which 
time a limited number would be taken, not by indi- 
viduals, but by the association, upon these terms : the 

13S 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

applicant must not be less than eighteen years old, 
and of respectable family and good character; he 
must pass an examination as to education, pay a 
thousand dollars in advance for the privilege of be- 
coming an apprentice, and must remain under the 
commands of the association until a great part of the 
membership (more than half, I think) should be 
willing to sign his application for a pilot's license. 

All previously articled apprentices were now taken 
away from their masters and adopted by the associa- 
tion. The president and secretary detailed them for 
service on one boat or another, as they chose, and 
changed them from boat to boat according to certain 
rules. If a pilot could show that he was in infirm 
health and needed assistance, one of the cubs would 
be ordered to go with him. 

The widow and orphan list grew, but so did the 
association's financial resources. The association 
attended its own funerals in state and paid for them. 
When occasion demanded, it sent members down the 
river upon searches for the bodies of brethren lost by 
steamboat accidents ; a search of this kind sometimes 
cost a thousand dollars. 

The association procured a charter and went into 
the insurance business also. It not only insured the 
lives of its members, but took risks on steamboats. 

The organization seemed indestructible. It was 
the tightest monopoly in the world. By the United 
States law no man could become a pilot unless two 
duly licensed pilots signed his application, and now 
there was nobody outside of the association com- 
petent to sign. Consequently the making of pilots 

139 



MARK TWAIN 

was at an end. Every year some would die and 
others become incapacitated by age and infirmity; 
there wotild be no new ones to take their places. In 
time the association could put wages up to any 
figure it chose; and as long as it should be wise 
enough not to carry the thing too far and provoke 
the national government into amending the licensing 
system, steamboat -owners would have to submit, 
since there would be no help for it. 

The owners and captains were the only obstruc- 
tion that lay between the association and absolute 
power, and at last this one was removed. Incredible 
as it may seem, the owners and captains deliberately 
did it themselves. When the pilots' association 
announced, months beforehand, that on the first day 
of September, 1861, wages would be advanced to 
five hundred dollars per month, the owners and 
captains instantly put freights up a few cents, and 
explained to the farmers along the river the necessity 
of it, by calling their attention to the burdensome 
rate of wages about to be established. It was a 
rather slender argument, but the farmers did not 
seem to detect it. It looked reasonable to them that 
to add five cents freight on a bushel of com was 
justifiable under the circumstances, overlooking the 
fact that this advance on a cargo of forty thousand 
sacks was a good deal more than necessary to cover 
the new wages. 

So, straightway the captains and owners got up an 
association of their own, and proposed to put cap- 
tains' wages up to five hundred dollars, too, and 
move for another advance in freights. It was a 

140 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

novel idea, but of course an effect which had been 
produced once could be produced again. The new 
association decreed (for this was before all the out- 
siders had been taken into the pilots' association) 
that if any captain employed a non-association pilot, 
he should be forced to discharge him, and also pay a 
fine of five hundred dollars. Several of these heavy 
fines were paid before the captains' organization 
grew strong enough to exercise full authority over its 
membership; but all that ceased, presently. The 
captains tried to get the pilots to decree that no 
member of their corporation should serve under a 
non-association captain; but this proposition was 
declined. The pilots saw that they would be backed 
up by the captains and the underwriters anyhow, and 
so they wisely refrained from entering into entangling 
alliances. 

As I have remarked, the pilots' association was 
now the compactest monopoly in the world, perhaps, 
and seemed simply indestructible. And yet the days 
of its glory were numbered. First, the new railroad, 
stretching up through Mississippi, Tennessee, and 
Kentucky, to Northern railway -centers, began to 
divert the passenger travel from the steamboats ; next 
the war came and almost entirely annihilated the 
steamboating industry during several years, leaving 
most of the pilots idle and the cost of living advancing 
all the time; then the treasurer of the St. Louis 
association put his hand into the till and walked off 
with every dollar of the ample fund ; and finally, the 
railroads intruding everywhere, there was little for 
steamers to do, when the war was over, but carry 

141 



MARK TWAIN 

freights; so straightway some genius from the At- 
lantic coast introduced the plan of towing a dozen 
steamer cargoes down to New Orleans at the tail of 
a vulgar little tug-boat ; and behold, in the twinkling 
of an eye, as it were, the association and the noble 
science of piloting were things of the dead and pa- 
thetic past! 

142 



CHAPTER XVI 

RACING DAYS 

IT was always the custom for the boats to leave 
New Orleans between four and five o'clock in the 
afternoon. From three o'clock onward they would 
be burning rosin and pitch-pine (the sign of prepara- 
tion), and so one had the picturesque spectacle of a 
rank, some two or three miles long, of tall, ascending 
columns of coal-black smoke; a colonnade which 
supported a sable roof of the same smoke blended 
together and spreading abroad over the city. Every 
outward-bound boat had its flag flying at the jack- 
staff, and sometimes a duplicate on the verge-staff 
astern. Two or three miles of mates were com- 
manding and swearing with more than usual em- 
phasis: countless processions of freight barrels and 
boxes were spinning athwart the levee and flying 
aboard the stage-planks; belated passengers were 
dodging and skipping among these frantic things, 
hoping to reach the forecastle companionway alive, 
but having their doubts about it; women with 
reticules and bandboxes were trsang to keep up with 
husbands freighted with carpet sacks and crying 
babies, and making a failure of it by losing their 
heads in the whirl and roar and general distraction; 
drays and baggage-vans were clattering hither and 

143 



MARK TWAIN 

thither in a wild hurry, every now and then getting 
blocked and jammed together, and then during ten 
seconds one could not see them for the profanity, 
except vaguely and dimly ; every windlass connected 
with every fore-hatch, from one end of that long 
array of steamboats to the other, was keeping up a 
deafening whizz and whir, lowering freight into the 
hold, and the half -naked crews of perspiring negroes 
that worked them were roaring such songs as **De 
Las' Sack! De Las' Sack!" — inspired to unimagin- 
able exaltation by the chaos of turmoil and racket 
that was driving everybody else mad. By this time 
the hurricane and boiler decks of the steamers would 
be packed black with passengers. The "last bells" 
would begin to clang, all down the line, and then the 
powwow seemed to double; in a moment or two the 
final warning came — a simultaneous din of Chinese 
gongs, with the cry, "All dat ain't goin', please to 
git asho'!" — and behold the powwow quadrupled! 
People came swarming ashore, overturning excited 
stragglers that were trying to swarm aboard. One 
more moment later a long array of stage-planks was 
being hauled in, each with its customary latest 
passenger clinging to the end of it with teeth, nails, 
and everything else, and the customary latest pro- 
crastinator making a wild spring shoreward over his 
head. 

Now a number of the boats slide backward into the 
stream, leaving wide gaps in the serried rank of 
steamers. Citizens crowd the decks of boats that 
are not to go, in order to see the sight. Steamer 
after steamer straightens herself up, gathers all her 

144 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

strength, and presently comes swinging by, under a 
tremendous head of steam, with flag flying, black 
smoke rolling, and her entire crew of firemen and 
deck-hands (usually swarthy negroes) massed to- 
gether on the forecastle, the best 'Voice" in the 
lot towering from the midst (being mounted on the 
capstan), waving his hat or a flag, and all roaring 
a mighty chorus, while the parting cannons boom 
and the multitudinous spectators wave their hats 
and huzza! Steamer after steamer falls into line, 
and the stately procession goes winging its flight up 
the river. 

In the old times, whenever two fast boats started 
out on a race, with a big crowd of people looking on, 
it was inspiring to hear the crews sing, especially if 
the time were nightfall, and the forecastle lit up 
with the red glare of the torch-baskets. Racing was 
royal ftm. The public always had an idea that 
racing was dangerous; whereas the opposite was the 
case — that is, after the laws were passed which 
restricted each boat to just so many pounds of steam 
to the square inch. No engineer was ever sleepy or 
careless when his heart was in a race. He was con- 
stantly on the alert, trying gauge-cocks and watching 
things. The dangerous place was on slow, plodding 
boats, where the engineers drowsed aroimd and 
allowed chips to get into the "doctor" and shut off 
the water-supply from the boilers. 

In the "flush times" of steamboating, a race be- 
tween two notoriously fleet steamers was an event 
of vast importance. The date was set for it several 
weeks in advance, and from that time forward the 

145 



MARK TWAIN 

whole Mississippi valley was in a state of consum- 
ing excitement. Politics and the weather were 
dropped, and people talked only of the coming race. 
As the time approached, the two steamers "stripped" 
and got ready. Every encumbrance that added 
weight, or exposed a resisting surface to wind or 
water, was removed, if the boat could possibly do 
without it. The ''spars," and sometimes even their 
supporting derricks, were sent ashore, and no means 
left to set the boat afloat in case she got aground. 
When the Eclipse and the A. L. Shotwell ran their 
great race many years ago, it was said that pains 
were taken to scrape the gilding off the fanciful 
device which hung between the Eclipse's chimneys, 
and that for that one trip the captain left off his 
kid gloves and had his head shaved. But I always 
doubted these things. 

If the boat was known to make her best speed 
when drawing five and a half feet forward and five 
feet aft, she carefully loaded to that exact figure — 
she wouldn't enter a dose of homeopathic pills on 
her manifest after that. Hardly any passengers 
were taken, because they not only add weight but 
they never will ''trim boat." They always run to 
the side when there is anything to see, whereas a 
conscientious and experienced steamboatman would 
stick to the center of the boat and part his hair in 
the middle with a spirit-level. 

No way-freights and no way-passengers were al- 
lowed, for the racers would stop only at the largest 
towns, and then it would be only "touch and go." 
Coal-flats and wood-flats were contracted for before- 

146 




THE PARTING CHORU? 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

hand, and these were kept ready to hitch on to the 
flying steamers at a moment's warning. Double 
crews were carried, so that all work could be quickly 
done. 

The chosen date being come, and all things in 
readiness, the two great steamers back into the 
stream, and lie there jockeying a moment, apparently 
watching each other's slightest movement, like 
sentient creatures; flags drooping, the pent stream 
shrieking through safety-valves, the black smoke 
rolling and tumbling from the chimneys and darken- 
ing all the air. People, people everywhere; the 
shores, the housetops, the steamboats, the ships, 
are packed with them, and you know that the 
borders of the broad Mississippi are going to be 
fringed with humanity thence northward twelve hun- 
dred miles, to welcome these racers. 

Presently tall columns of steam burst from the 
*scape-pipes of both steamers, two guns boom a 
good-by, two red-shirt ed heroes mounted on capstans 
wave their small flags above the massed crews on 
the forecastles, two plaintive solos Hnger on the air 
a few waiting seconds, two mighty choruses burst 
forth — and here they come! Brass bands bray 
*/'Hail Columbia," huzza after huzza thunders from 
the shores, and the stately creatures go whistling by 
like the wind. 

Those boats will never halt a moment between 
New Orleans and St. Louis, except for a second or 
two at large towns, or to hitch thirty-cord wood- 
boats alongside. You should be on board when they 
take a couple of those wood-boats in tow and turn a 

147 



MARK TWAIN 

swarm of men into each ; by the time you have wiped 
your glasses and put them on, you will be wondering 
what has become of that wood. 

Two nicely matched steamers will stay in sight of 
each other day after day. They might even stay 
side by side, but for the fact that pilots are not all 
alike, and the smartest pilots will win the race. If 
one of the boats has a ''lightning" pilot, whose 
"partner" is a trifle his inferior, you can tell which 
one is on watch by noting whether that boat has 
gained ground or lost some during each four-hour 
stretch. The shrewdest pilot can delay a boat if he 
has not a fine genius for steering. Steering is a very 
high art. One must not keep a rudder dragging 
across a boat's stern if he wants to get up the river 
fast. 

There is a great difference in boats, of course. 
For a long time I was on a boat that was so slow 
we used to forget what year it was we left port in. 
But of course this was at rare intervals. Ferry-boats 
used to lose valuable trips because their passengers 
grew old and died, waiting for us to get by. This 
was at still rarer intervals. I had the documents 
for these occurrences, but through carelessness they 
have been mislaid. This boat, the John J. Roe, was 
so slow that when she finally sunk in Madrid Bend 
it was five years before the owners heard of it. That 
was always a confusing fact to me, but it is accord- 
ing to the record, anyway. She was dismally slow; 
still, we often had pretty exciting times racing with 
islands, and rafts, and such things. One trip, how- 
ever, we did rather well. We went to St. Louis in 

148 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

sixteen days. But even at this rattling gait I think 
we changed watches three times in Fort Adams 
reach, which is five miles long. A ''reach" is a 
piece of straight river, and of course the current 
drives through such a place in a pretty lively 
way. 

That trip we went to Grand Gulf, from New 
Orleans, in four days (three hundred and forty 
miles); the Eclipse and Shotwell did it in one. We 
were nine days out, in the chute of 63 (seven hun- 
dred miles) ; the Eclipse and Shotwell went there in 
two days. Something over a generation ago, a boat 
called the /. M. White went from New Orleans to 
Cairo in three days, six hours, and forty-four min- 
utes. In 1853 the Eclipse made the same trip in 
three days, three hours, and twenty minutes.^ In 
1870 the R. E. Lee did it in three days and one hour. 
This last is called the fastest trip on record. I will 
try to show that it was not. For this reason: the 
distance between New Orleans and Cairo, when the 
/. M. White ran it, was about eleven hundred and 
six miles; consequently her average speed was a 
trifle over fourteen miles per hour. In the Eclipse's 
day the distance between the two ports had become 
reduced to one thousand and eighty miles; conse- 
quently her average speed was a shade imder four- 
teen and three-eighths miles per hour. In the 
R. E. Lee's time the distance had diminished to 
about one thousand and thirty miles; consequently 
her average was about fourteen and one-eighth 

^Tirne disputed. Some authorities add i hour and 16 minutes 
to this. 

I4Q 



MARK TWAIN 

miles per hour. Therefore the Eclipse's was con- 
spicuously the fastest time that has ever been made. 



THE RECORD OF SOME FAMOUS TRIPS. 

[From Commodore RoUingpin's Almanac] 
FAST TIME ON THE WESTERN WATERS. 

FROM NEW ORLEANS TO NATCHEZ — 268 MILES. 





Run made in 




Run made in 




D. 


H. 


M. 






H. M. 


I8I4. 


Orleans 6 


6 


40 


1844. Sultana 




19 45 


I8I4. 


Comet 5 


10 





185 1. Magnolia 




19 SO 


I8I5. 


Enterprise 4 


II 


20 


1853. A. L. Shotwell 




19 49 


I8I7. 


Washington 4 








1853. Southern Belle 




20 3 


I8I7. 


Shelby 3 


20 





1853. Princess (No. 4) 




20 26 


I8I9. 


Paragon 3 


8 





1853. Eclipse 




19 47 


1828. 


Tecumseh 3 


I 


20 


1855. Princess (New) 




18 S3 


1834- 


Tuscarora i 


21 





1855. Natchez (New) 




17 30 


1838. 


Natchez i 


17 





1856. Princess (New) 




17 30 


1840. 


Ed. Shippen i 


8 





1870. Natchez 




17 17 


1842. 


Belle of the West i 


18 





1870. R. E. Lee 




17 II 




FROM NEW ORLEANS TO CAIRO — IO24 MILES. 








Run made in 




Run made in 




D. 


H. 


M. 




D. 


H. M. 


1844- 


J. M. White 3 


6 


44 


1869. Dexter 


3 


6 20 


1852. 


Reindeer 3 


12 


25 


1870. Natchez 


3 


4 34 


1853. 


Eclipse 3 


4 


4 


1870. R. E. Lee 


3 


I 


1853. 


A. L. Shotwell 3 


3 


40 









FROM NEW ORLEANS TO LOUISVILLE — I44O MILES. 







Run made in 




Run 


made in 






D. 


H. 


M. 




D. 


H. 


M. 


I8I5. 


Enterprise 


25 


2 


40 


1840. Ed. Shippen 




14 





I8I7. 


Washington 


25 








1842. Belle of the West 




14 





I8I7. 


Shelby 


20 


4 


20 


1843. Duke of Orleans 




23 





1819. 


Paragon 


18 


10 





1844. Sultana 




12 





1828. 


Tecumseh 


8 


4 





1849. Bostona 




8 





1834. 


Tuscarora 


7 


16 





1851. Belle Key 




23 





1837. 


Gen. Brown 


6 


22 





1852. Reindeer 




20 


45 


1837. 


Randolph 


6 


22 





1852, EcHpse 




10 





1837. 


Empress 


6 


17 





1853. A. L. Shotwell 




10 


20 


1837. 


Sultana 


6 


15 





1853. Eclipse 




9 


30 




FROM NEW ORLEANS TO DC 


NALDSONVILLE — 78 MILES. 












Run made in 




Run 


mad 


3 in 








H. 


M. 






H. 


M. 


1852. 


A. L. Shotwell 




5 


42 


i860. Atlantic 




5 


II 


1853. 


Eclipse 




5 


42 


i860. Gen. Quitman 




S 


6 


I8S4. 


Sultana 




5 


12 


1865. Ruth 




4 


43 


1856. 


Princess 




4 


SI 


1870. R. E. Lee 




4 


59 



150 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 



FROM NEW ORLEANS TO ST. LOUIS — 12 18 MILES. 



1844. J. M. White 
1849. Missouri 
1869. Dexter 



Run made in 

D. H. M. 

3 23 9 

4 19 o 
490 



1870. Natchez 
1870. R. E. Lee 



Run made in 

D. H. M. 

3 21 57 
3 18 14 



FROM LOUISVILLE TO CINCINNATI — I4X MILES. 





Run made in 




Run made in 


I8I9. 
I8I9. 
1822. 
1837. 
1843. 


D. H. M. 

Gen. Pike i i6 o 
Paragon i 14 20 
Wheeling Packet i 10 
Moselle 12 
Duke of Orleans 12 


1843. Congress 

1S46. Ben Franklin (No. 

1852. AUeghaney 
iSS2. Pittsburgh 

1853. Telegraph (No. 3) 


H. M- 

12 20 

6) II 45 

10 38 

10 23 

9 52 




FROM LOUISVILLE TO ST. LOUIS — 750 MILES. 






Run made in 


Run made in 


1842. 
1854. 


D. H. M. 

Congress 2 r 
Pike I 23 


1854. Northerner 

1855. Southerner 


D. H. M. 

I 22 30 
I 19 




FROM CINCINNATI TO PITTSBURG 49O MILES. 






Run made in 1 


Run made in 


i8so. 
18SI. 


D. H. I 

Telegraph (No. 2) i 17 1852. Pittsburgh 
Buckeye State i i6 

FROM ST. LOUIS TO ALTON— 30 MILES. 


D. H. 
I IS 




Run made in 




Run made in 


1853. 
1876. 


H. M. 

Altona I 35 
Golden Eagle i 37 


1876. V/ar Eagle 


H. M. 

I 37 



MISCELLANEOUS RUNS. 

In June, i8S9. the St. Louis and Keokuk Packet, City of Louisiana, made the 
run from St. Louis to Keokuk (214 miles) in 16 hours and 20 minutes, the best 
time on record. 

In 1868 the steamer Hawkeye State, of the Northern Line Packet Company, 
made the run from St. Louis to St. Paul (800 mUes in 2 days and 20 hours. Never 
was beaten. 

In 1 8 33 the steamer Polar Star made the run from St. Louis to St. Joseph, on 
the Missouri River, in 64 hours. In July, 1856, the steamer Jas. H. Lucas. Andy 
Wineland, Master, made the same run in 60 hours and 57 minutes. The distance 
between the ports is 600 miles, and when the difficulties of navigating the tur- 
bulent Missouri are taken into consideration, the performance of the Lucas deserves 
especial mention. 

THE RUN OF THE ROBERT E. LEE. 

The time made by the R. E. Lee from New Orleans to St. Louis in 1870, in her 

famous race vnth the Natchez, is the best on record, and, inasmuch as the race 
created a national interest, we give her time-table from port to port. 



MARK TWAIN 



Left New Orleans, Thursday, June 30, 1870, at 4 o'clock and SS minutes, p. M.; 
reached 



D. 


H. 


M. 




D. 


H. 


u' 


CarroUton 




27J^ 


Vicksburg 







38 


Harry HUls 


I 


0^ 


Milliken's Bend 




2 


37 


Red Church 


I 


39 


Bailey's 




3 


48 


Bonnet Carre 


2 


38 


T,ake Providence 




5 


47 


College Point 


3 


50H 


Greenville 




10 


55 


Donaldsonville 


4 


59 


Napoleon 




16 


22 


Plaquemine 


7 


SM 


White River 




16 


56 


Baton Rouge 


8 


25 


Australia 




19 





Bayou Sara 


10 


26 


Helena 




23 


25 


Red River 


12 


56 


Half Mile below St. Francis 


2 








Stamps 


13 


56 


Memphis 


2 


6 


9 


Bryaro 


IS 


51H 


Foot of Island 37 


2 


9 





Hinderson's 


16 


29 


Foot of Island 26 


2 


13 


30 


Natchez 


17 


II 


Tow-head, Island 14 


2 


17 


23 


Cole's Creek 


18 


53 


New Madrid 


2 


19 


50 


Waterproof 


19 


21 


Dry Bar No. 10 


2 


20 


37 


Rodney 


20 


45 


Foot of Island 8 


2 


21 


25 


St. Joseph 


21 


2 


Upper Tow-head— Lucas Bend 3 








Grand Gulf 


22 


6 


Cairo 


3 


I 





Hard Times 


22 


18 


St. Louis 


3 


18 


14 


Half Mile below Warrenton i 

















' The Lee landed at St. Louis at 11.25 a. m., on July 4, 1870 — six hours and thirty- 
six minutes ahead of the Natchez. The oflScers of the Natchez claimed seven 
hours and one minute stoppage on account of fog and repairing machinery. The 
R. E. Lee was commanded by Captain John W. Cannon, and the Natchez was in 
charge of that veteran Southern boatman, Captain Thomas P. Leathers. 



152 



CHAPTER XVII 

CUT-OFFS AND STEPHEN 

THESE dry details are of importance in one par- 
ticular. They give me an opportunity of intro- 
ducing one of the Mississippi's oddest peculiarities — 
that of shortening its length from time to time. If 
you will throw a long, pliant apple-paring over your 
shoulder, it will pretty fairly shape itself into an 
average section of the Mississippi River; that is, the 
nine or ten himdred miles stretching from Cairo, 
Illinois, southward to New Orleans, the same being 
wonderfully crooked, with a brief straight bit here 
and there at wide intervals. The two-himdred-mile 
stretch from Cairo northward to St. Louis is by no 
means so crooked, that being a rocky country which 
the river cannot cut much. 

The water cuts the alluvial banks of the "lower ** 
river into deep horseshoe ciu-ves; so deep, indeed, 
that in some places if you were to get ashore at one 
extremity of the horseshoe and walk across the neck, 
half or three-quarters of a mile, you could sit down 
and rest a couple of hours while your steamer was 
coming around the long elbow at a speed of ten 
miles an hour to take you on board again. When 
the river is rising fast, some scoundrel whose planta- 
tion is back in the country, and therefore of inferior 

153 



MARK TWAIN 

value, has only to watch his chance, cut a little 
gutter across the narrow neck of land some dark 
night, and turn the water into it, and in a wonder- 
fully short time a miracle has happened: to wit, the 
whole Mississippi has taken possession of that little 
ditch, and placed the countryman's plantation on 
its bank (quadrupling its value), and that other 
party's formerly valuable plantation finds itself 
away out yonder on a big island ; the old watercourse 
around it will soon shoal up, boats cannot approach 
within ten miles of it, and down goes its value to a 
fourth of its former worth. Watches are kept on 
those narrow necks at needful times, and if a man 
happens to be caught cutting a ditch across them, the 
chances are all against his ever having another op- 
portunity to cut a ditch. 

Pray observe some of the effects of this ditching 
business. Once there was a neck opposite Port Hud- 
son, Louisiana, which was only half a mile across in 
its narrowest place. You could walk across there 
in fifteen minutes; but if you made the journey 
around the cape on a raft, you traveled thirty-five 
miles to accomplish the same thing. In 1722 the 
river darted through that neck, deserted its old bed, 
and thus shortened itself thirty-five miles. In the 
same way it shortened itself twenty-five miles at 
Black Hawk Point in 1699. Below Red River Land- 
ing, Raccourci cut-off was made (forty or fifty years 
ago, I think). This shortened the river twenty- 
eight miles. In our day, if you travel by river 
from the southernmost of these three cut-offs to 
the northernmost, you go only seventy miles. To 

154 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

do the same thing a hundred and seventy-six years 
ago, one had to go a hundred and fifty-eight miles 
— a shortening of eighty-eight miles in that trifling 
distance. At some forgotten time in the past, cut- 
offs were made above Vidalia, Louisiana, at Island 
92, at Island 84, and at Hale's Point. These short- 
ened the river, in the aggregate, seventy-seven miles. 

Since my own day on the Mississippi, cut-offs have 
been made at Hurricane Island, at Island 100, at 
Napoleon, Arkansas, at Walnut Bend, and at Coun- 
cil Bend. These shortened the river, in the aggre- 
gate, sixty-seven miles. In my own time a cut-off 
was made at American Bend, which shortened the 
river ten miles or more. 

Therefore the Mississippi between Cairo and New 
Orleans was twelve hundred and fifteen miles long 
one hundred and seventy-six years ago. It was 
eleven hundred and eighty after the cut-off of 1722. 
It was one thousand and forty after the American 
Bend cut-off. It has lost sixty-seven miles since. 
Consequently, its length is only nine hundred and 
seventy-three miles at present. 

Now, if I wanted to be one of those ponderous 
scientific people, and "let on" to prove what had 
occurred in the remote past by what had occurred in 
a given time in the recent past, or what will occur 
in the far future by what has occurred in late years, 
what an opportunity is here! Geology never had 
such a chance, nor such exact data to argue from! 
Nor ** development of species," either! Glacial 
epochs are great things, but they are vague — ^vague. 
Please observe : 

155 



MARK TWAIN 

In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years 
the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hun- 
dred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a 
trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, 
any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see 
that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million 
years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi 
River was upward of one million three hundred 
thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf 
of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same 
token any person can see that seven hundred and 
forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will 
be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo 
and New Orleans will have joined their streets to- 
gether, and be plodding comfortably along imder a 
single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. 
There is something fascinating about science. One 
gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such 
a trifling investment of fact. 

When the water begins to flow through one of 
those ditches I have been speaking of, it is time for 
the people thereabouts to move. The water cleaves 
the banks away like a knife. By the time the ditch 
has become twelve or fifteen feet wide, the calamity 
is as good as accomplished, for no power on earth 
can stop it now. When the width has reached a 
hundred yards, the banks begin to peel off in slices 
half an acre wide. The current flowing around the 
bend traveled formerly only five miles an hour; now 
it is tremendously increased by the shortening of the 
distance. I was on board the first boat that tried 
to go through the cut-off at American Bend, but we 

156 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

did not get through. It was toward midnight, and 
a wild night it was — thunder, Hghtning, and torrents 
of rain. It was estimated that the current in the 
cut-off was making about fifteen or twenty miles an 
hour; twelve or thirteen was the best our boat could 
do, even in tolerably slack water, therefore perhaps 
we were foolish to try the cut-off. However, Mr. 
Brown was ambitious, and he kept on trying. The 
eddy running up the bank, under the ''point," was 
about as swift as the current out in the middle; so 
we would go flying up the shore like a lightning 
express-train, get on a big head of steam, and ''stand 
by for a surge ' ' when we struck the current that was 
whirling by the point. But all our preparations were 
useless. The instant the current hit us it spun us 
around like a top, the water deluged the forecastle, 
and the boat careened so far over that one could 
hardly keep his feet. The next instant we were 
away down the river, clawing with might and main 
to keep out of the woods. We tried the experiment 
four times. I stood on the forecastle companion- 
way to see. It was astonishing to observe how sud- 
denly the boat would spin around and turn tail the 
moment she emerged from the eddy and the current 
struck her nose. The sounding concussion and the 
quivering would have been about the same if she 
had come full speed against a sand-bank. Under the 
lightning flashes one could see the plantation cabins 
and the goodly acres tumble into the river, and the 
crash they made was not a bad effort at thunder. 
Once, when we spun around, we only missed a house 
about twenty feet that had a light burning in the 

157 



MARK TWAIN 

window, and in the same instant that house went 
overboard. Nobody could stay on our forecastle; 
the water swept across it in a torrent every time we 
plunged athwart the current. At the end of our fourth 
effort we brought up in the woods two miles below 
the cut-off; all the country there was overflowed, 
of course. A day or two later the cut-off was three- 
quarters of a mile wide, and boats passed up through 
it without much difficulty, and so saved ten miles. 

The old Raccourci cut-off reduced the river's 
length twenty-eight miles. There used to be a 
tradition connected with it. It was said that a boat 
came along there in the night and went around the 
enormous elbow the usual way, the pilots not know- 
ing that the cut-off had been made. It was a grisly, 
hideous night, and all shapes were vague and dis- 
torted. The old bend had already begun to fill up, 
and the boat got to running away from mysterious 
reefs, and occasionally hitting one. The perplexed 
pilots fell to swearing, and finally uttered the entirely 
unnecessary wish that they might never get out of 
that place. As always happens in such cases, that 
particular prayer was answered, and the others 
neglected. So to this day that phantom steamer is 
still butting around in that deserted river, trying to 
find her way out. More than one grave watchman 
has sworn to me that on drizzling, dismal nights, he 
has glanced fearfully down that forgotten river as he 
passed the head of the island, and seen the faint 
glow of the specter steamer's lights drifting through 
the distant gloom, and heard the muffled cough of her 
'scape-pipes and the plaintive cry of her leadsmen. 

iS8 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

In the absence of further statistics, I beg to 
close this chapter with one more reminiscence of 
^'Stephen." 

Most of the captains and pilots held Stephen's note 
for borrowed sums, ranging from two hundred and 
fifty dollars upward. Stephen never paid one of 
these notes, but he was very prompt and very zealous 
about renewing them every twelve months. 

Of course there came a time, at last, when Stephen 
could no longer borrow of his ancient creditors; so 
he was obliged to lie in wait for new men who did 
not know him. Such a victim was good-hearted, 
simple-natured Young Yates (I use a fictitious name, 
but the real name began, as this one does, with a Y). 
Young Yates graduated as a pilot, got a berth, and 
when the month was ended and he stepped up to 
the clerk's office and received his two hundred and 
fifty dollars in crisp new bills, Stephen was there! 
His silvery tongue began to wag, and in a very little 
while Yates's two hundred and fifty dollars had 
changed hands. The fact was soon known at pilot 
headquarters, and the amusement and satisfaction 
of the old creditors were large and generous. But 
innocent Yates never suspected that Stephen's 
promise to pay promptly at the end of the week was 
a worthless one. Yates called for his money at the 
stipulated time; Stephen sweetened him up and put 
him off a week. He called then, according to agree- 
ment, and came away sugar-coated again, but suffer- 
ing under another postponement. So the thing 
went on. Yates haunted Stephen week after week, 
to no purpose, and at last gave it up. And then 

159 



MARK TWAIN 

straightway Stephen began to haunt Yates! Wher- 
ever Yates appeared, there was the inevitable 
Stephen. And not only there, but beaming with 
affection and gushing with apologies for not being 
able to pay. By and by, whenever poor Yates saw 
him coming, he would turn and fly, and drag his 
company with him, if he had company ; but it was of 
no use; his debtor would run him down and comer 
him. Panting and red-faced, Stephen would come, 
with outstretched hands and eager eyes, invade the 
conversation, shake both of Yates's arms loose in 
their sockets, and begin: 

*'My, what a race I've had! I saw you didn't see 
me, and so I clapped on all steam for fear I'd miss 
you entirely. And here you are! there, just stand 
so, and let me look at you ! Just the same old noble 
countenance. [To Yates's friend :] Just look at him ! 
Look at him! Ain't it just good to look at him! 
Ain't it now? Ain't he just a picture! Some call 
him a picture; I call him a panorama! That's what 
he is — an entire panorama. And now I'm reminded ! 
How I do wish I could have seen you an hour earlier ! 
For twenty -four hours I've been saving up that two 
hundred and fifty dollars for you; been looking for 
you everywhere. I waited at the Planter's from six 
yesterday evening till two o'clock this morning, 
without rest or food. My wife says, 'Where have 
you been all night ? ' I said, 'This debt lies heavy on 
my mind.' She says, 'In all my days I never saw a 
man take a debt to heart the way you do.' I said, 
'It's my nature; how can I change it?' She says, 
*Well, do go to bed and get some rest.' I said, 'Not 

1 60 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

till that poor, noble young man has got his money.* 
So I set up all night, and this morning out I shot, 
and the first man I struck told me you had shipped 
on the Grand Turk and gone to New Orleans. Well, 
sir, I had to lean up against a building and cry. 
So help me goodness, I couldn't help it. The man 
that owned the place come out cleaning up with a 
rag, and said he didn't like to have people cry against 
his building, and then it seemed to me that the 
whole world had turned against me, and it wasn't 
any use to live any more ; and coming along an hour 
ago, suffering no man knows what agony, I met Jim 
Wilson and paid him the two hundred and fifty 
dollars on account; and to think that here you are, 
now, and I haven't got a cent ! But as sure as I am 
standing here on this ground on this particular 
brick — there, I've scratched a mark on the brick 
to remember it by — I'll borrow that money and 
pay it over to you at twelve o'clock sharp, to- 
morrow! Now. stand so; let me look at you just 
once more." 

And so on. Yates's life became a burden to him. 
He could not escape his debtor and his debtor's awful 
sufferings on account of not being able to pay. He 
dreaded to show himself in the street, lest he should 
find Stephen lying in wait for him at the corner. 

Bogart's billiard - saloon was a great resort for 
pilots in those days. They met there about as much 
to exchange river news as to play. One morning 
Yates was there; Stephen was there, too, but kept 
out of sight. But by and by, when about all the 
pilots had arrived who were in town, Stephen sud- 

i6i 



MARK TWAIN 

denly appeared in the midst, and rushed for Yates 
as for a long-lost brother. 

''Oh, I am so glad to see you! Oh my soul, the 
sight of you is such a comfort to my eyes ! Gentle- 
men, I owe all of you money; among you I owe 
probably forty thousand dollars. I want to pay it; 
I intend to pay it — every last cent of it. You all 
know, without my telling you, what sorrow it has 
cost me to remain so long under such deep obliga- 
tions to such patient and generous friends; but the 
sharpest pang I suffer — by far the sharpest — is from 
the debt I owe to this noble young man here ; and I 
have come to this place this morning especially to 
make the announcement that I have at last found a 
method whereby I can pay off all my debts ! And most 
especially I wanted him to be here when I announced 
it. Yes, my faithful friend, my benefactor, I've found 
the method! I've found the method to pay off all 
jny debts, and you'll get your money !" Hope dawned 
in Yates's eyes; then Stephen, beaming benignantly, 
and placing his hand upon Yates's head, added, "I 
am going to pay them off in alphabetical order!" 

Then he turned and disappeared. The full signifi- 
cance of Stephen's "method" did not dawn upon the 
perplexed and musing crowd for some two minutes; 
and then Yates murmured with a sigh: 

*'Well, the Y's stand a gaudy chance. He won't 
get any further than the C's in this world, and I 
reckon that after a good deal of eternity has wasted 
away in the next one, I'll still be referred to up there 
as 'that poor, ragged pilot that came here from St. 
Louis in the early days!'" 

162 



CHAPTER XVIII 

I TAKE A FEW EXTRA LESSONS 

DURING the two or two and a half years of my 
apprenticeship I served under many pilots, and 
had experience of many kinds of steamboatmen and 
many varieties of steamboats; for it was not always 
convenient for Mr. Bixby to have me with him, and 
in such cases he sent me with somebody else. I 
am to this day profiting somewhat by that experi- 
ence; for in that brief, sharp schooling, I got per- 
sonally and familiarly acquainted with about all the 
different types of human nature that are to be found 
in fiction, biography, or history. The fact is daily 
borne in upon me that the average shore-employ- 
ment requires as m.uch as forty years to equip a man 
v/ith this sort of an education. When I say I am 
still profiting by this thing, I do not mean that it 
has constituted me a judge of men — no, it has not 
done that, for judges of men are bom, not made. 
My profit is various in kind and degree, but the 
feature of it which I value most is the zest which 
that early experience has given to my later reading. 
When I find a well-drawn character in fiction or 
biography I generally take a warm personal interest 
in him, for the reason that I have known him before 
— ^met him on the river. 

163 



MARK TWAIN 

The figure that comes before me oftenest, out of 
the shadows of that vanished time, is that of Brown, 
of the steamer Pennsylvania — the man referred to in 
a former chapter, whose memory was so good and 
tiresome. He was a middle-aged, long, slim, bony, 
smooth-shaven, horse-faced, ignorant, stingy, mali- 
cious, snarling, fault -hunting, mote-magnifying ty- 
rant. I early got the habit of coming on watch with 
dread at my heart. No matter how good a time I 
might have been having with the off -watch below, 
and no matter how high my spirits might be when 
I started aloft, my soul became lead in my body the 
moment I approached the pilot-house. 

I still remember the first time I ever entered the 
presence of that man. The boat had backed out 
from St. Louis and was "straightening down." I 
ascended to the pilot-house in high feather, and very- 
proud to be semi-officially a member of the executive 
family of so fast and famous a boat. Brown was at 
the wheel. I paused in the middle of the room, all 
fixed to make my bow, but Brown did not look 
around. I thought he took a furtive glance at me 
out of the comer of his eye, but as not even this 
notice was repeated, I judged I had been mistaken. 
By this time he was picking his way among some 
dangerous ''breaks" abreast the woodyards; there- 
fore it would not be proper to interrupt him; so I 
stepped softly to the high bench and took a seat. 

There was silence for ten minutes; then my new 
boss turned and inspected me deliberately and pains- 
takingly from head to heel for about — as it seemed to 
me— a quarter of an hour. After which he removed 

164 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

his countenance and I saw it no more for some 
seconds; then it came around once more, and this 
question greeted me : 

"Are you Horace Bigsby's cub?" 

"Yes, sir." 

After this there was a pause and another inspec- 
tion. Then : 

"What's your name?" 

I told him. He repeated it after me. It was 
probably the only thing he ever forgot ; for although 
I was mth him many months he never addressed 
himself to me in any other way than "Here!" and 
then his command followed. 

"Where was you born?" 

"In Florida, Missouri." 

A pause. Then : 

"Dem sight better stayed there!" 

By means of a dozen or so of pretty direct ques- 
tions, he pumped my family history out of me. 

The leads were going now in the first crossing. 
This interrupted the inquest. When the leads had 
been laid in he resumed : 

"How long you been on the river?" 

I told him. After a pause: 

"Where'd you get them shoes?" 

I gave him the information. 

"Hold up your foot!" 

I did so. He stepped back, examined the shoe 
minutely and contemptuously, scratching his head 
thoughtfully, tilting his high sugar-loaf hat well 
forward to facilitate the operation, then ejaculated, 
** Well, I'll be dod demed !" and returned to his wheel. 

i6s 



MARK TWAIN 

What occasion there was to be dod derned about 
it is a thing which is still as much of a mystery to 
me now as it was then. It must have been all of 
fifteen minutes — fifteen minutes of dull, homesick 
silence — before that long horse-face swung round 
upon me again — and then what a change ! It was as 
red as fire, and every muscle in it was working. 
Now came this shriek: 

**Here! You going to set there all day?" 

I lit in the middle of the floor, shot there by the 
electric suddenness of the surprise. As soon as I 
could get my voice I said apologetically : " I have had 
no orders, sir." 

''You've had no orders! My, what a fme bird we 
are ! We must have orders! Our father was a genile- 
man — owned slaves — and we've been to school. Yes, 
we are a gentleman, too, and got to have orders! 
Orders, is it? ORDERS is what you want! Dod 
dem my skin, Fll learn you to swell yourself up and 
blow around here about your dod-derned orders! 
G'way from the wheel!" (I had approached it 
without knowing it.) 

I moved back a step or two and stood as in a 
dream, all my senses stupefied by this frantic 
assault. 

"What you standing there for? Take that ice- 
pitcher down to the texas-tender ! Come, move 
along, and don't you be all day about it!" 

The moment I got back to the pilot-house Brown 
said: 

"Here! What was you doing down there all this 
time?" 

i66 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

"I couldn't find the texas-tender ; I had to go all 
the way to the pantry." 

"Demed likely story! Fill up the stove." 

I proceeded to do so. He watched me like a cat. 
Presently he shouted : 

* * Put down that shovel ! Demdest numskull I ever 
saw — ain't even got sense enough to load up a 
stove." 

All through the watch this sort of thing went on. 
Yes, and the subsequent watches were much like it 
during a stretch of months. As I have said, I soon 
got the habit of coming on duty with dread. The 
moment I was in the presence, even in the darkest 
night, I could feel those yellow eyes upon me, and 
knew their owner was watching for a pretext to spit 
out some venom on me. Preliminarily he would say : 

"Here! Take the wheel." 

Two minutes later: 

''Where in the nation 3^ou going to? Pull her 
down! pull her down!" 

After another moment: 

"Say! You going to hold her all day? Let her 
go — meet her! meet her!" 

Then he would jump from the bench, snatch the 
wheel from me, and meet her himself, pouring ovit 
wrath upon me all the time. 

George Ritchie was the other pilot's cub. He was 
having good times now; for his boss, George Ealer, 
was as kind-hearted as Brown wasn't. Ritchie had 
steered for Brown the season before ; consequently, he 
knew exactly how to entertain himself and plague 
me, all by the one operation. Whenever I took the 

167 



MARK TWAIN 

wheel for a moment on Ealer's watch, Ritchie would 
sit back on the bench and play Brown, with con- 
tinual ejaculations of "Snatch her! snatch her! 
Derndest mud-cat I ever saw!" ''Here! Where are 
you going nowf Going to run over that snag?" 
*Tull her down! Don't you hear me? Pull her 
down!'' "There she goes! Just as I expected! I 
told you not to cramp that reef. G'way from the 
wheel!" 

So I always had a rough time of it, no matter 
whose watch it was; and sometimes it seemed to me 
that Ritchie's good-natured badgering was pretty 
nearly as aggravating as Brown's dead-earnest 
nagging. 

I often wanted to kill Brown, but this would not 
answer. A cub had to take everything his boss gave, 
in the way of vigorous comment and criticism; and 
we all believed that there was a United States law 
making it a penitentiary offense to strike or threaten 
a pilot who was on duty. However, I could imagine 
myself killing Brown ; there was no law against that ; 
and that was the thing I used always to do the 
moment I was abed. Instead of going over my river 
in my mind, as was my duty, I threw business aside 
for pleasure, and killed Brown. I killed Brown every 
night for months; not in old, stale, commonplace 
ways, but in new and picturesque ones — ^ways that 
were sometimes surprising for freshness of design 
and ghastliness of situation and environment. 

Brown was always watching for a pretext to find 
fault; and if he could find no plausible pretext, he 
would invent one. He would scold you for shaving 

i68 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

a shore, and for not shaving it; for hugging a bar, 
and for not hugging it; for "pulling down" when not 
invited, and for not pulling down when not invited; 
for firing up without orders, and for waiting for 
orders. In a word, it was his invariable rule to find 
fault with everything you did ; and another invariable 
rule of his was to throw all his remarks (to you) into 
the form of an insult. 

One day we were approaching New Madrid, bound 
down and heavily laden. Brown was at one side of 
the wheel, steering; I was at the other, standing by 
to **pull down" or ''shove up." He cast a furtive 
glance at me every now and then. I had long ago 
learned what that meant; viz., he was trying to 
invent a trap for me. I wondered what shape it was 
going to take. By and by he stepped back from 
the wheel and said in his usual snarly way: 

''Here! See if you've got gimiption enough to 
roimd her to." 

This was simply bound to be a success; nothing 
could prevent it; for he had never allowed me to 
round the boat to before; consequently, no matter 
how I might do the thing, he could find free fault with 
it. He stood back there with his greedy eye on me, 
and the result was what might have been foreseen : I 
lost my head in a quarter of a minute, and didn't 
know what I was about ; I started too early to bring 
the boat around, but detected a green gleam of joy in 
Brown's eye, and corrected my mistake. I started 
around once more while too high up, but corrected 
myself again in time. I made other false moves, and 
still managed to save myself; but at last I grew so 

169 



MARK TWAIN 

confused and anxious that I tinnbled into the very 
worst blunder of all — I got too far down before begin- 
ning to fetch the boat around. Brown's chance was 
come. 

His face turned red with passion; he made one 
bound, hurled me across the house with a sweep of 
his arm, spun the wheel down, and began to pour out 
a stream of vituperation upon me which lasted till he 
was out of breath. In the course of this speech he 
called me all the different kinds of hard names he 
could think of, and once or twice I thought he was 
even going to swear — but he had never done that, and 
he didn't this time. ' ' Dod dem ' ' was the nearest he 
ventured to the luxury of swearing, for he had been 
brought up with a wholesome respect for future fire 
and brimstone. 

That was an uncomfortable hour ; for there was a 
big audience on the hurricane-deck. When I went to 
bed that night, I killed Brown in seventeen different 
ways — all of them new. 



170 



CHAPTER XIX 

BROWN AND I EXCHANGE COMPLIMENTS 

TWO trips later I got into serious trouble. Brown 
was steering; I was "pulling down." My 
younger brother appeared on the hurricane-deck, and 
shouted to Brown to stop at some landing or other, a 
mile or so below. Brown gave no intimation that he 
had heard anything. But that was his way : he never 
condescended to take notice of an under-clerk. The 
wind was blowing; Brown was deaf (although he 
always pretended he wasn't), and I very much 
doubted if he had heard the order. If I had had two 
heads, I would have spoken; but as I had only one, it 
seemed judicious to take care of it; so I kept still. 

Presently, sure enough, we went saiHng by that 
plantation. Captain Klinefelter appeared on the 
deck, and said: 

"Let her come around, sir, let her come around. 
Didn't Henry tell you to land here?" 

''No, sir!" 

"I sent him up to do it." 

*'He did come up; and that's all the good it done, 
the dod-derned fool. He never said anything." 

"Didn't you hear him?" asked the captain of me. 

Of course I didn't want to be mixed up in this busi- 
ness, but there was no way to avoid it; so I said: 

171 



MARK TWAIN 

*' Yes, sir." 

I knew what Brown's next remark would be, before 
he uttered it. It was: 

* ' Shut your mouth ! You never heard anything of 
the kind." 

I closed my mouth, according to instructions. An 
hour later Henry entered the pilot-house, unaware of 
what had been going on. He was a thoroughly in- 
offensive boy, and I was sorry to see him come, for I 
knew Brown would have no pity on him. Brown 
began, straightway: 

''Here! Why didn't you tell me we'd got to land 
at that plantation?" 

''I did tell you, Mr. Brown." 

''It's a lie!" 

I said: 

"You lie, yourself. He did tell you." 

Brown glared at me in unaffected surprise; and 
for as much as a moment he was entirely speechless ; 
then he shouted to me : 

"I'll attend to your case in a half a minute!" then 
to Henry, "And you leave the pilot-house; out with 
you!" 

It was pilot law, and must be obeyed. The boy 
started out, and even had his foot on the upper step 
outside the door, when Brown, with a sudden access 
of fury, picked up a ten-pound lump of coal and 
sprang after him; but I was between, with a heavy 
stool, and I hit Brown a good honest blow which 
stretched him out. 

I had committed the crime of crimes — I had lifted 
my hand against a pilot on duty ! I supposed I was 

172 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

booked for the penitentiary sure, and couldn't be 
booked an}^ surer if I went on and squared my long 
account with this person while I had the chance; 
consequently I stuck to him and pounded him with 
my fists a considerable time. I do not know how 
long, the pleasure of it probably made it seem longer 
than it really was; but in the end he struggled free 
and jumped up and sprang to the wheel: a very 
natural solicitude, for, all this time, here was this 
steamboat tearing down the river at the rate of fifteen 
miles an hour and nobody at the helm! However, 
Eagle Bend was two miles wide at this bank-full 
stage, and correspondingly long and deep: and the 
boat was steering herself straight down the middle 
and taking no chances. Still, that was only luck — 
a body might have found her charging into the woods. 
Perceiving at a glance that the Pennsylvania was in 
no danger. Brown gathered up the big spy-glass, 
war-club fashion, and ordered me out of the pilot- 
house with more than Comanche bluster. But I was 
not afraid of him now; so, instead of going, I tarried, 
and criticized his grammar. I reformed his ferocious 
speeches for him, and put them into good English, 
calling his attention to the advantage of pure Eng- 
lish over the bastard dialect of the Pennsylvania 
collieries whence he was extracted. He could have 
done his part to admiration in a cross-fire of mere 
vituperation, of course ; but he was not equipped for 
this species of controversy; so he presently laid 
aside his glass and took the wheel, muttering and 
shaking his head; and I retired to the bench. The 
racket had brought everybody to the hurricane- 

173 



MARK TWAIN 

deck, and I trembled when I saw the old captain 
looking up from amid the crowd. I said to myself, 
"Now I am done for!" for although, as a rule, he was 
so fatherly and indulgent toward the boat's family, 
and so patient of minor shortcomings, he could be 
stem enough when the fault was worth it. 

I tried to imagine what he would do to a cub pilot 
who had been guilty of such a crime as mine, com- 
mitted on a boat guard-deep with costly freight and 
alive with passengers. Our watch was nearly ended. 
I thought I would go and hide somewhere till I got a 
chance to slide ashore. So I slipped out of the pilot- 
house, and down the steps, and around to the texas- 
door, and was in the act of gliding within, when the 
captain confronted me ! I dropped my head, and he 
stood over me in silence a moment or two, then said 
impressively : 

"Follow me." 

I dropped into his wake; he led the way to his 
parlor in the forward end of the texas. We were 
alone, now. He closed the after door; then moved 
slowly to the forward one and closed that. He sat 
down; I stood before him. He looked at me some 
little time, then said: 

"So you have been fighting Mr. Brown?" 

I answered meekly: 

"Yes, sir." 

"Do you know that that is a very serious matter?" 

"Yes, sir." 

"Are you aware that this boat was plowing down 
the river fully five minutes with no one at the 
wheel?" 

174 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

*^Yes, sir." 

* ' Did you strike him first ?'* 

"Yes, sir." 

"What with?" 

"A stool, sir." 

"Hard?" 

"Middling, sir." 

"Did it knock him down?" 

"He— he fell, sir." 

"Did you follow it up? Did you do anything 
further?" 

"Yes, sir." 

"What did you do?" 

"Pounded him, sir." 

"Pounded him?" 

"Yes, sir." 

"Did you poimd him much? that is, severely?" 

"One might call it that, sir, maybe." 

"I'm deuced glad of it! Hark ye, never mention 
that I said that. You have been guilty of a great 
crime; and don't you ever be guilty of it again, on 
this boat. But — lay for him ashore! Give him a 
good sound thrashing, do you hear? I'll pay the ex- 
penses. Now go — and mind you, not a word of this 
to anybody. Clear out with you! You've been 
guilty of a great crime, you whelp!" 

I slid out, happy with the sense of a close shave and 
a mighty deliverance; and I heard him laughing to 
himself and slapping his fat thighs after I had closed 
his door. 

When Brown came off watch he went straight to 
the captain, who was talking with some passengers 

175 



MARK TWAIN 

on the boiler -deck, and demanded that I be put 
ashore in New Orleans — and added: 

*'I'll never ttim a wheel on this boat again while 
that cub stays." 

The captain said: 

**But he needn't come round when you are on 
watch, Mr. Brown." 

'T won't even stay on the same boat with him. 
One of us has got to go ashore." 

''Very well," said the captain, *'let it be yourself," 
and resumed his talk with the passengers. 

During the brief remainder of the trip I knew how 
an emancipated slave feels, for I was an emancipated 
slave myself. While we lay at landings I listened to 
George Ealer's flute, or to his readings from his two 
Bibles, that is to say. Goldsmith and Shakespeare, or 
I played chess with him — and would have beaten him 
sometimes, only he always took back his last move 
and ran the game out differently. 



176 



CHAPTER XX 

A CATASTROPHE 

WE lay three days in New Orleans, but the 
captain did not succeed in finding another 
pilot, so he proposed that I should stand a daylight 
watch and leave the night watches to George Ealer. 
But I was afraid ; I had never stood a watch of any 
sort by myself, and I believed I should be sure to get 
into trouble in the head of some chute, or ground the 
boat in a near cut through some bar or other. 
Brown remained in his place, but he would not 
travel with me. So the captain gave me an order 
on the captain of the A. T. Lacey for a passage 
to St. Louis, and said he would find a new pilot there 
and my steersman's berth could then be resumed. 
The Lacey was to leave a couple of days after the 
Pennsylvania. 

The night before the Pennsylvania left, Henry and 
I sat chatting on a freight pile on the levee till mid- 
night. The subject of the chat, mainly, was one 
which I think we had not exploited before — steam- 
boat disasters. One was then on its way to us, little 
as we suspected it ; the water which was to make the 
steam which should cause it was washing past some 
point fifteen hundred miles up the river while we 
talked — but it would arrive at the right time and the 
12 177 



MARK TWAIN 

right place. We doubted if persons not clothed with 
authority were of much use in cases of disaster and 
attendant panic, still they might be of some use; so 
we decided that if a disaster ever fell within our expe- 
rience we wotild at least stick to the boat, and give 
such minor service as chance might throw in the way. 
Henry remembered this, afterward, when the dis- 
aster came, and acted accordingly. 

The Lacey started up the river two days behind the 
Pennsylvania. We touched at Greenville, Missis- 
sippi, a couple of days out, and somebody shouted: 

"The Pennsylvania is blown up at Ship Island, and 
a hundred and fifty lives lost !" 

At Napoleon, Arkansas, the same evening, we got 
an extra, issued by a Memphis paper, which gave 
some particulars. It mentioned my brother, and said 
he was not hurt. 

Further up the river we got a later extra. My 
brother was again mentioned, but this time as being 
hurt beyond help. We did not get full details of the 
catastrophe until we reached Memphis. This is the 
sorrowful story: 

It was six o'clock on a hot summer morning. The 
Pennsylvania was creeping along, north of Ship 
Island, about sixty miles below Memphis, on a half- 
head of steam, towing a wood-flat which was fast be- 
ing emptied. George Ealer was in the pilot-house — 
alone, I think; the second engineer and a striker had 
the watch in the engine-room ; the second mate had 
the watch on deck; George Black, Mr. Wood, and my 
brother, clerks, were asleep, as were also Brown and 
the head engineer, the carpenter, the chief mate, 

178 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

and one striker; Captain Klinefelter was in the 
barber's chair, and the barber was preparing to shave 
him. There were a good many cabin passengers 
aboard, and three or four hundred deck passengers — 
so it was said at the time — and not very many of 
them were astir. The wood being nearly all out of 
the fiat now, Ealer rang to ''come ahead" full of 
steam, and the next moment four of the eight 
boilers exploded with a thunderous crash, and the 
whole forward third of the boat was hoisted toward 
the sky ! The main part of the mass, with the chim- 
neys, dropped upon the boat again, a mountain of 
riddled and chaotic rubbish — and then, after a little, 
fire broke out. 

Many people were flung to considerable distances 
and fell in the river ; among these were Mr. Wood and 
my brother and the carpenter. The carpenter was 
still stretched upon his mattress when he struck the 
water seventy -five feet from the boat. Brown, the 
pilot, and George Black, chief clerk, were never seen 
or heard of after the explosion. The barber's chair, 
with Captain Klinefelter in it and unhurt, was left 
with its back overhanging vacancy — everything for- 
ward of it, floor and all, had disappeared; and the 
stupefied barber, who was also unhurt, stood with 
one toe projecting over space, still stirring his lather 
unconsciously and saying not a word. 

When George Ealer saw the chimneys plunging 
aloft in front of him, he knew what the matter was; 
so he muffled his face in the lapels of his coat, and 
pressed both hands there tightly to keep this pro- 
tection in its place so that no steam could get to his 

179 



MARK TWAIN 

nose or mouth. He had ample time to attend to 
these details while he was going up and returning. 
He presently landed on top of the unexploded 
boilers, forty feet below the former pilot-house, ac- 
companied by his wheel and a rain of other stuff, and 
enveloped in a cloud of scalding steam. All of the 
many who breathed that steam died; none escaped. 
But Ealer breathed none of it. He made his way to 
the free air as quickly as he could; and when the 
steam cleared away he returned and climbed up on 
the boilers again, and patiently hunted out each and 
every one of his chessmen and the several joints 
of his flute. 

By this time the fire was beginning to threaten. 
Shrieks and groans filled the air. A great many 
persons had been scalded, a great many crippled ; the 
explosion had driven an iron crowbar through one 
man's body — I think they said he was a priest. He 
did not die at once, and his sufferings were very 
dreadful. A young French naval cadet of fifteen, 
son of a French admiral, was fearfully scalded, but 
bore his tortures manfully. Both mates were badly 
scalded, but they stood to their posts, nevertheless. 
They drew the wood-boat aft, and they and the cap- 
tain fought back the frantic herd of frightened im- 
migrants till the wounded could be brought there 
and placed in safety first. 

When Mr. Wood and Henry fell in the water they 
struck out for shore, which was only a few hundred 
yards away; but Henry presently said he believed 
he was not hurt (what an unaccountable error !) and 
therefore would swim back to the boat and help 

1 80 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

save the wounded. So they parted and Henry re- 
turned. 

By this time the fire was making fierce headway, 
and several persons who were imprisoned imder the 
ruins were begging piteously for help. All efforts to 
conquer the fire proved fruitless, so the buckets were 
presently thrown aside and the officers fell to with 
axes and tried to cut the prisoners out. A striker 
was one of the captives; he said he was not injured, 
but could not free himself, and when he saw that the 
fire was likely to drive away the workers he begged 
that some one would shoot him, and thus save him 
from the more dreadful death. The fire did drive 
the axmen away, and they had to listen, helpless, to 
this poor fellow's supplications till the flames ended 
his miseries. 

The fire drove all into the wood-flat that could be 
accommodated there; it was cut adrift then, and it 
and the burning steamer floated down the river 
toward Ship Island. They moored the flat at the 
head of the island, and there, unsheltered from the 
blazing sun, the half -naked occupants had to remain, 
without food or stimulants, or help for their hurts, 
during the rest of the day. A steamer came along, 
finally, and carried the unfortunates to Memphis, 
and there the most lavish assistance was at once 
forthcoming. By this time Henry was insensible. 
The physicians examined his injuries and saw that 
they were fatal, and naturally turned their main 
attention to patients who could be saved. 

Forty of the wounded were placed upon pallets 
on the floor of a great public hall, and among these 

i8i 



MARK TWAIN 

was Henry. There the ladies of Memphis came 
every day, with flowers, fruits, and dainties and 
dehcacies of all kinds, and there they remained and 
nursed the wounded. All the physicians stood 
watches there, and all the medical students ; and the 
rest of the town furnished money, or whatever else 
was wanted. And Memphis knew how to do all 
these things well; for many a disaster like the Penn- 
sylvania's had happened near her doors, and she 
was experienced, above all other cities on the river, 
in the gracious office of the Good Samaritan. 

The sight I saw when I entered that large hall was 
new and strange to me. Two long rows of prostrate 
forms — more than forty in all — and every face and 
head a shapeless wad of loose raw cotton. It was a 
gruesome spectacle. I watched there six days and 
nights, and a very melancholy experience it was. 
There was one daily incident which was peculiarly 
depressing : this was the removal of the doomed to a 
chamber apart. It was done in order that the morale 
of the other patients might not be injuriously affected 
by seeing one of their niimber in the death-agony. 
The fated one was always carried out with as little 
stir as possible, and the stretcher was always hidden 
from sight by a wall of assistants; but no matter: 
everybody knew what that cluster of bent forms, 
with its muffled step and its slow movement, meant; 
and all eyes watched it wistfully, and a shudder went 
abreast of it like a wave. 

I saw many poor fellows removed to the "death- 
room," and saw them no more afterward. But I 
saw our chief mate carried thither more than once. 

182 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

His hurts were frightful, especially his scalds. He 
was clothed in linseed oil and raw cotton to his 
waist, and resembled nothing human. He was often 
out of his mind ; and then his pains would make him 
rave and shout and sometimes shriek. Then, after 
a period of dumb exhaustion, his disordered imagina- 
tion would suddenly transform the great apartment 
into a forecastle, and the hurrying throng of nurses 
into the crew ; and he would come to a sitting posture 
and shout, *'Hump yourselves, hump yourselves, you 
petrifactions, snail-bellies, pall-bearers! going to be 
all day getting that hatful of freight out?" and sup- 
plement this explosion with a firmament-obliterating 
irruption of profanity which nothing could stay or 
stop till his crater was empty. And now and then 
while these frenzies possessed him, he would tear off 
handfuls of the cotton and expose his cooked flesh 
to view. It was horrible. It was bad for the others, 
of course — this noise and these exhibitions; so the 
doctors tried to give him morphine to quiet him. 
But, in his mind or out of it, he would not take it. 
He said his wife had been killed by that treacherous 
drug, and he would die before he would take it. 
He suspected that the doctors were concealing it 
in his ordinary medicines and in his water — so he 
ceased from putting either to his lips. Once, when 
he had been without water during two sweltering 
days, he took the dipper in his hand, and the sight 
of the limpid fluid, and the misery of his thirst, 
tempted him almost beyond his strength; but he 
mastered himself and threw it away, and after that 
he allowed no more to be brought near him. Three 

183 



MARK TWAIN 

times I saw him carried to the death-room, insensible 
and supposed to be dying ; but each time he revived, 
cursed his attendants, and demanded to be taken 
back. He lived to be mate of a steamboat again. 
But he was the only one who went to the death- 
room and returned alive. Dr. Peyton, a principal 
physician, and rich in all the attributes that go to 
constitute high and flawless character, did all that 
educated judgment and trained skill could do for 
Henry; but, as the newspapers had said in the begin- 
ning, his hurts were past help. On the evening of 
the sixth day his wandering mind busied itself with 
matters far away, and his nerveless fingers "picked 
at his coverlet." His hour had struck; we bore him 
to the death-room, poor boy. 



184 



CHAPTER XXI 

A SECTION IN MY BIOGRAPHY 

IN due course I got my license. I was a pilot 
now, full-fledged. I dropped into casual employ- 
ments; no misfortunes resulting, intermittent work 
gave place to steady and protracted engagements. 
Time drifted smoothly and prosperously on, and I 
supposed — and hoped — ^that I was going to follow 
the river the rest of my days, and die at the wheel 
when my mission was ended. But by and by the 
war came, commerce was suspended, my occupation 
was gone. 

I had to seek another liveHhood. So I became a 
silver-miner in Nevada; next, a newspaper reporter; 
next, a gold-miner in California; next, a reporter in 
San Francisco; next, a special correspondent in the 
Sandwich Islands; next, a roving correspondent in 
Etuope and the East; next, an instructional torch- 
bearer on the lecture platform; and, finally, I became 
a scribbler of books, and an immovable fixture among 
the other rocks of New England. 

In so few words have I disposed of the twenty-one 
slow-drifting years that have come and gone since 
I last looked from the windows of a pilot-house. 

Let us resume, now. 

i8s 



CHAPTER XXII 

I RETURN TO MY MUTTONS 

AFTER twenty-one years' absence I felt a very 
jr\ strong desire to see the river again, and the 
steamboats, and such of the boys as might be left; 
so I resolved to go out there. I enlisted a poet for 
company, and a stenographer to "take him down," 
and started westward about the middle of April. 

As I proposed to make notes, with a view to print- 
ing, I took some thought as to methods of procedure. 
I reflected that if I were recognized, on the river, I 
should not be as free to go and come, talk, inquire, 
and spy around, as I should be if unknown; I re- 
membered that it was the custom of steamboatmen 
in the old times to load up the confiding stranger 
with the most picturesque and admirable lies, and 
put the sophisticated friend off with dull and in- 
effectual facts : so I concluded that, from a business 
point of view, it would be an advantage to disguise 
our party with fictitious names. The idea was cer- 
tainly good, but it bred infinite bother; for although 
Smith, Jones, and Johnson are easy names to remem- 
ber when there is no occasion to remember them, it is 
next to impossible to recollect them when they are 
wanted. How do criminals manage to keep a brand- 
new alias in mind ? This is a great mystery. I was 

i86 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

innocent; and yet was seldom able to lay my hand 
on my new name when it was needed ; and it seemed 
to me that if I had had a crime on my conscience 
to further confuse me, I could never have kept the 
name by me at all. 

We left per Pennsylvania Railroad, at 8 a.m. 
April 1 8. 

Evening. — Speaking of dress. Grace and picturesqueness 
drop gradually out of it as one travels away from New York. 

I find that among my notes. It makes no differ- 
ence which direction you take, the fact remains the 
same. Whether you move north, south, east, or 
west, no matter: you can get up in the morning and 
guess how far you have come, by noting what degree 
of grace and picturesqueness is by that time lacking 
in the costimies of the new passengers — I do not 
mean of the women alone, but of both sexes. It may 
be that carriage is at the bottom of this thing; and 
I think it is ; for there are plenty of ladies and gentle- 
men in the provincial cities whose garments are all 
made by the best tailors and dressmakers of New 
York; yet this has no perceptible effect upon the 
grand fact: the educated eye never mistakes those 
people for New-Yorkers. No, there is a godless 
grace and snap and style about a bom and bred 
New-Yorker which mere clothing cannot effect. 

April iQ. — ^This morning struck into the region of full goatees 
— sometimes accompanied by a mustache, but only occasionally. 

It was odd to come upon this thick crop of an 
obsolete and tmcomely fashion; it was like running 

187 



MARK TWAIN 

suddenly across a forgotten acquaintance whom you 
had supposed dead for a generation. The goatee ex- 
tends over a wide extent of country, and is accom- 
panied by an iron-clad belief in Adam, and the 
biblical histor^^ of creation, which has not suffered 
from the assaults of the scientists. 

Afternoon. — At the railway - stations the loafers carry both 
hands in their breeches pockets; it was observable, heretofore, 
that one hand was sometimes out-of-doors — ^here, never. This 
is an important fact in geography. 

If the loafers determined the character of a cotm- 
try, it would be still more important, of course. 

Heretofore, all along, the station loafer has been often 
observed to scratch one shin with the other foot; here these 
remains of activity are wanting. This has an ominous look. 

By and by we entered the tobacco-chewing region. 
Fifty years ago the tobacco-chewing region covered 
the Union. It is greatly restricted now. 

Next, boots began to appear. Not in strong force, 
however. Later — away down the Mississippi — they 
became the rule. They disappeared from other 
sections of the Union with the mud; no doubt they 
will disappear from the river villages, also, when 
proper pavements come in. 

We reached St. Louis at ten o'clock at night. At 
the counter of the hotel I tendered a hurriedly in- 
vented fictitious name, with a miserable attempt 
at careless ease. The clerk paused, and inspected 
me in the compassionate way in which one inspects a 
respectable person who is found in doubtful circum- 
stances; then he said: 

i88 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

"It's all right; I know what sort of a room you 
want. Used to clerk at the St. James, in New York.** 

An unpromising beginning for a fraudulent career! 
We started to the supper-room, and met two other 
men whom I had known elsewhere. How odd and 
unfair it is: wicked impostors go around lecturing 
imder my nom de guerre, and nobody suspects them ; 
but when an honest man attempts an imposture, he 
is exposed at once. 

One thing seemed plain: we must start down the 
river the next day, if people who could not be de- 
ceived were going to crop up at this rate: an tm- 
palatable disappointment, for we had hoped to have 
a week in St. Louis. The Southern was a good hotel, 
and we could have had a comfortable time there. 
It is large and well conducted, and its decorations 
do not make one cry, as do those of the vast Palmer 
House, in Chicago. True, the billiard-tables were 
of the Old Silurian Period, and the cues and balls of 
the Post-Pliocene ; but there was refreshment in this, 
not discomfort ; for there are rest and healing in the 
contemplation of antiquities. 

The most notable absence observable in the bil- 
liard-room was the absence of the river-man. If he 
was there, he had taken in his sign; he was in dis- 
guise. I saw there none of the swell airs and graces, 
and ostentatious displays of money, and pompous 
squanderings of it, which used to distinguish the 
steamboat crowd from the dry-land crowd in the 
bygone days, in the thronged billiard-rooms of St. 
Louis. In those times the principal saloons were 
always populous with river-men; given fifty players 

189 



MARK TWAIN 

present, thirty or thirty-five were likely to be from 
the river. But I suspected that the ranks were thin 
now, and the steamboatmen no longer an aristocracy. 
Why, in my time they used to call the "barkeep" 
Bill, or Joe, or Tom, and slap him on the shoulder ; I 
watched for that. But none of these people did it. 
Manifestly, a glory that once was had dissolved and 
vanished away in these twenty-one years. 

When I went up to my room I foimd there the 
yotmg man called Rogers, crying. Rogers was not 
his name; neither was Jones, Brown, Dexter, Fergu- 
son, Bascom, nor Thompson; but he answered to 
either of these that a body fotmd handy in an 
emergency; or to any other name, in fact, if he per- 
ceived that you meant him. He said: 

''What is a person to do here when he wants a 
drink of water? drink this slush?" 

**Can*t you drink it ?'* 

"I could if I had some other water to wash it with.'* 

Here was a thing which had not changed ; a score of 
years had not affected this water's mulatto complex- 
ion in the least ; a score of centuries would succeed no 
better, perhaps. It comes out of the turbulent, bank- 
caving Missouri, and every tumblerful of it holds 
nearly an acre of land in solution. I got this fact 
from the bishop of the diocese. If you will let your 
glass stand half an hour, you can separate the land 
from the water as easy as Genesis ; and then you wi\l 
find them both good : the one good to eat, the other 
good to drink. The land is very nourishing, the water 
is thoroughly wholesome. The one appeases hunger; 
the other, thirst. But the natives do not take them 

190 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

separately, but together, as nature mixed them. 
When they find an inch of mud in the bottom of a 
glass, they stir it up, and then take the draught as 
they would gruel. It is difficult for a stranger to get 
used to this batter, but once used to it he will prefer 
it to water. This is really the case. It is good for 
steamboating, and good to drink; but it is worthless 
for all other purposes, except baptizing. 

Next morning we drove aroimd town in the rain. 
The city seemed but little changed. It was greatly 
changed, but it did not seem so; because in St. 
Louis, as in London and Pittsburg, you can't per- 
suade a new thing to look new; the coal-smoke turns 
it into an antiquity the moment you take your hand 
off it. The place had just about doubled its size 
since I was a resident of it, and was now become a 
city of four hundred thousand inhabitants; still, in 
the solid business parts, it looked about as it had 
looked formerly. Yet I am sure there is not as much 
smoke in St. Louis now as there used to be. The 
smoke used to bank itself in a dense billowy black 
canopy over the town, and hide the sky from view. 
This shelter is very much thinner now; still, there 
is a sufficiency of smoke there, I think. I heard no 
complaint. 

However, on the outskirts changes were apparent 
enough; notably in dwelling-house architecture. 
The fine new homes are noble and beautiful and 
modern. They stand by themselves, too, with green 
lawns around them; whereas the dwellings of a 
former day are packed together in blocks, and are all 
of one pattern, with windows all alike, set in an 

191 



MARK TWAIN 

arched framework of twisted stone; a sort of house 
which was handsome enough when it was rarer. 

There was another change — the Forest Park. This 
was new to me. It is beautiful and ver}?- extensive, 
and has the excellent merit of having been made 
mainly by nature. There are other parks, and fine 
ones, notably Tower Grove and the Botanical Gar- 
dens ; for St. Louis interested herself in such improve- 
ments at an earlier day than did the most of our cities. 

The first time I ever saw St. Louis I could have 
bought it for six million doUars, and it was the mis- 
take of my life that I did not do it. It was bitter now 
to look abroad over this domed and steepled metropo- 
lis, this solid expanse of bricks and mortar stretching 
away on every hand into dim, measure-defying dis- 
tances, and remember that I had allowed that oppor- 
tunity to go by. Why I should have allowed it to go 
by seems, of course, foolish and inexplicable to-day, 
at a first glance ; yet there were reasons at the time 
to justify this course. 

A Scotchman, Hon. Charles Augustus Murray, 
writing some forty-five or fifty years ago, said : ' ' The 
streets are narrow, iU-paved, and ill-lighted." Those 
streets are narrow still, of course; many of them are 
ill-paved yet ; but the reproach of ill-lighting cannot 
be repeated now. The ' ' Catholic New Church ' ' was 
the only notable building then, and Mr. Murray was 
confidently called upon to admire it, with its ''species 
of Grecian portico, surmounted by a kind of steeple, 
much too diminutive in its proportions, and sur- 
mounted by sundry ornaments" which the unimagi- 
native Scotchman found himself "quite unable to de- 

192 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

scribe'*; and therefore was grateful when a German 
tourist helped him out with the exclamation: *'By 

, they look exactly like bed-posts!" St. Louis is 

well equipped with stately and noble public buildings 
now, and the little church, which the people used to 
be so proud of, lost its importance a long time ago. 
Still, this would not surprise Mr. Murray, if he could 
come back; for he prophesied the coming greatness 
of St. Louis with strong confidence. 

The further we drove in our inspection tour, the 
more sensibly I realized how the city had grown since 
I had seen it last ; changes in detail became steadily 
more apparent and frequent than at first, too : changes 
uniformly evidencing progress, energy, prosperity.. 

But the change of changes was on the ''levee." 
This time, a departure from the rule. Half a dozen 
sound-asleep steamboats where I used to see a solid 
mile of wide-awake ones ! This was melancholy, this 
was woeful. The absence of the pervading and jocund 
steamboatman from the billiard-saloon was ex- 
plained. He was absent because he is no more. 
His occupation is gone, his power has passed away, 
he is absorbed into the common herd; he grinds at 
the mill, a shorn Samson and inconspicuous. Half a 
dozen lifeless steamboats, a mile of empty wharves, a 
negro, fatigued with whisky, stretched asleep in a wide 
and soundless vacancy, where the serried hosts of 
commerce used to contend!^ Here was desolation 
indeed. 

* Captain Marryat, writing forty-five years ago, says: "St. Louis 
has 20,000 inhabitants. The river abreast of the town is crowded with 
steamboats, lying in two or three tiers." 

^3 193 



MARK TWAIN 

"The old, old sea, as one in tears, 

Comes murmuring, with foamy lips, 
And knocking at the vacant piers, 

Calls for his long-lost multitude of ships." 

The towboat and the railroad had done their work, 
and done it well and completely. The mighty 
bridge, stretching along over our heads, had done its 
share in the slaughter and spoliation. Remains of 
former steamboatmen told me,' with wan satisfaction, 
that the bridge doesn't pay. Still, it can be no suf- 
ficient compensation to a corpse to know that the 
dynamite that laid him out was not of as good quality 
as it had been supposed to be. 

The pavements along the river-front were bad; the 
sidewalks were rather out of repair; there was a rich 
abundance of mud. All this was familiar and satis- 
fying; but the ancient armies of drays, and struggling 
throngs of men, and mountains of freight, were gone; 
and Sabbath reigned in their stead. The immemo- 
rial mile of cheap, foul doggeries remained, but busi- 
ness was dull with them; the multitudes of poison- 
swilling Irishmen had departed, and in their places 
were a few scattering handfuls of ragged negroes, 
some drinking, some drunk, some nodding, others 
asleep. St. Louis is a great and prosperous and ad- 
vancing city ; but the river-edge of it seems dead past 
resurrection. 

Mississippi steamboating was bom about 1812 ; at 
the end of thirty years it had grown to mighty pro- 
portions ; and in less than thirty more it was dead ! A 
strangely short life for so majestic a creature. Of 
course it is not absolutely dead ; neither is a crippled 

194 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

octogenarian who could once jump twenty-two feet 
on level ground ; but as contrasted with what it was 
in its prime vigor, Mississippi steamboating may be 
called dead. 

It killed the old-fashioned keel-boating, by reduc- 
ing the freight trip to New Orleans to less than a 
week. The railroads have killed the steamboat pas- 
senger traffic by doing in two or three days what the 
steamboats consumed a week in doing : and the tow- 
ing fleets have killed the through-freight traffic by 
dragging six or seven steamer-loads of stuff down the 
river at a time, at an expense so trivial that steam- 
boat competition was out of the question. 

Freight and passenger way traffic remains to the 
steamers. This is in the hands — along the two thou- 
sand miles of river between St. Paul and New Or- 
leans — of two or three close corporations well for- 
tified with capital; and by able and thoroughly 
businesslike management and system, these make a 
sufficiency of money out of what is left of the once 
prodigious steamboating industry. I suppose that 
St. Louis and New Orleans have not suffered materi- 
ally by the change, but alas for the wood-yard man ! 

He used to fringe the river all the way ; his close- 
ranked merchandise stretched from the one city to 
the other, along the banks, and he sold uncountable 
cords of it every year for cash on the nail ; but all the 
scattering boats that are left bum coal now, and the 
seldomest spectacle on the Mississippi to-day is a 
wood-pile. Where now is the once wood-yard man? 



CHAPTER XXIII 

TRAVELING INCOGNITO 

MY idea was to tarry awhile in every town be- 
. tween St. Louis and New Orleans. To do this» 
it would be necessary to go from place to place 
by the short packet lines. It was an easy plan to 
make, and would have been an easy one to follow, 
twenty years ago — ^but not now. There are wide 
intervals between boats, these days. 

I wanted to begin with the interesting old French 
settlements of St. Genevieve and Kaskaskia, sixty 
miles below St. Louis. There was only one boat 
advertised for that section — a Grand Tower packet. 
Still, one boat was enough ; so we went down to look 
at her. She was a venerable rack-heap, and a fraud 
to boot; for she was playing herself for personal 
property, whereas the good honest dirt was so thickly 
caked all over her that she was righteously taxable 
as real estate. There are places in New England 
where her hurricane-deck would be worth a hundred 
and fifty dollars an acre. The soil on her forecastle 
was quite good — the new crop of wheat was already 
springing from the cracks in protected places. The 
companionway was of a dry sandy character, and 
would have been well suited for grapes, with a 
southern exposure and a little subsoiling. The soil 

196 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

of the boiler-deck was thin and rocky, but good 
enough for grazing purposes. A colored boy was on 
watch here — nobody else visible. We gathered from 
him that this calm craft would go as advertised, "if 
she got her trip"; if she didn't get it, she would 
wait for it. 

"Has she got any of her trip?" 

"Bless you, no, boss! She ain't unloadened, yit. 
She only come in dis mawnin'." 

He was uncertain as to when she might get her 
trip, but thought it might be to-morrow or maybe 
next day. This would not answer at all; so we had 
to give up the novelty of sailing down the river on a 
farm. We had one more arrow in our quiver: a 
Vicksburg packet, the Gold Dust, was to leave at 
5 P.M. We took passage in her for Memphis, and 
gave up the idea of stopping off here and there, as 
being impracticable. She was neat, clean, and com- 
fortable. We camped on the boiler-deck, and bought 
some cheap literature to kill time with. The vender 
was a venerable Irishman with a benevolent face and 
a tongue that worked easily in the socket, and from 
him we learned that he had lived in St. Louis thirty- 
four years and had never been across the river dining 
that period. Then he wandered into a very flowing 
lecture, filled with classic names and allusions, which 
was quite wonderful for fluency imtil the fact became 
rather apparent that this was not the first time, nor 
perhaps the fiftieth, that the speech had been de- 
livered. He was a good deal of a character, and 
much better company than the sappy literature he 
was selling. A random remark, connecting Irishmen 

197 



MARK TWAIN 

and beer, brought this nugget of information out 
of him : 

''They don't drink it, sir. They can't drink it, 
sir. Give an Irishman lager for a month, and he's 
a dead man. An Irishman is hned with copper, and 
the beer corrodes it. But whisky poHshes the copper 
and is the saving of him, sir." 

At eight o'clock, promptly, we backed out and — • 
crossed the river. As we crept toward the shore, in 
the thick darkness, a blinding glory of white electric 
light burst suddenly from our forecastle, and lit up 
the water and the warehouses as with a noonday 
glare. Another big change, this — no more flickering, 
smoky, pitch - dripping, ineffectual torch - baskets, 
now: their day is past. Next, instead of calling out 
a score of hands to man the stage, a couple of men 
and a hatful of steam lowered it from the derrick 
where it was suspended, launched it, deposited it in 
just the right spot, and the whole thing was over and 
done with before a mate in the olden time could have 
got his profanity-mill adjusted to begin the prepara- 
tory services. Why this new and simple method of 
handling the stages was not thought of when the 
first steamboat was built is a mystery which helps 
one to realize what a diill-witted slug the average 
himian being is. 

We finally got away at two in the morning, and 
when I turned out at six we were rounding to at a 
rocky point where there was an old stone warehouse 
— at any rate, the ruins of it; two or three decayed 
dwelling-houses were near by in the shelter of the 
leafy hills, but there were no evidences of himian or 

198 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

other animal life to be seen. I wondered if I had 
forgotten the river, for I had no recollection whatever 
of this place; the shape of the river, too, was iin- 
familiar; there was nothing in sight anywhere that 
I could remember ever having seen before. I was 
siirprised, disappointed, and annoyed. 

We put ashore a well-dressed lady and gentleman, 
and two well-dressed ladylike young girls, together 
with sundry Russia-leather bags. A strange place 
for such folk! No carriage was waiting. The party 
moved off as if they had not expected any, and 
struck down a winding country road afoot. 

But the mystery was explained when we got imder 
way again, for these people were evidently boimd 
for a large town which lay shut in behind a tow-head 
{i. e., new island) a couple of miles below this landing. 
I couldn't remember that town; I couldn't place it, 
couldn't call its name. So I lost part of my temper. 
I suspected that it might be St. Genevieve — and so 
it proved to be. Observe what this eccentric river 
had been about: it had built up this huge, useless 
tow-head directly in front of this town, cut off its 
river communications, fenced it away completely, 
and made a "coimtry" town of it. It is a fine old 
place, too, and deserved a better fate. It was settled 
by the French, and is a relic of a time when one 
could travel from the mouths of the Mississippi to 
Quebec and be on French territory and imder French 
rule all the way. 

Presently I ascended to the hurricane-deck and 
cast a longing glance toward the pilot-house. 

199 



CHAPTER XXIV 

MY INCOGNITO IS EXPLODED 

AFTER a close study of the face of the pilot on 
i\ watch, I was satisfied that I had never seen him 
before, so I went up there. The pilot inspected me; 
I reinspected the pilot. These customary prelimi- 
naries over, I sat down on the high bench, and he 
faced about and went on with his work. Every de- 
tail of the pilot-house was familiar to me, with one 
exception — a large-mouthed tube under the breast- 
board. I puzzled over that thing a considerable 
time; then gave up and asked what it was for. 

**To hear the engine-bells through." 

It was another good contrivance which ought to 
have been invented half a century sooner. So I was 
thinking when the pilot asked : 

"Do you know what this rope is for?'* 

I managed to get around this question without 
committing myself. 

"Is this the first time you were ever in a pilot- 
house?" 

I crept under that one. 

"Where are you from?" 

"New England." 

"First time you have ever been West?'' 

I climbed over this one. 
200 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

"If you take an interest in such things, I can tell 
you what all these things are for." 

I said I should like it. 

"This," putting his hand on a backing-bell rope, 
"is to sound the fire-alarm; this," putting his hand 
on a go-ahead bell, "is to call the texas-tender ; this 
one," indicating the whistle-lever, "is to call the 
captain" — and so he went on, touching one object 
after another and reeling off his tranquil spool of lies. 

I had never felt so like a passenger before. I 
thanked him, with emotion, for each new fact, and 
wrote it down in my note-book. The pilot warmed 
to his opportunity, and proceeded to load me up in 
the good old-fashioned way. At times I was afraid 
he was going to rupture his invention; but it always 
stood the strain, and he pulled through all right. 
He drifted, by easy stages, into revealments of the 
river's marvelous eccentricities of one sort and an- 
other, and backed them up with some pretty gigantic 
illustrations. For instance : 

"Do you see that little boulder sticking out of the 
water yonder? Well, when I first came on the river, 
that was a soHd ridge of rock, over sixty feet high 
and two miles long. All washed away but that." 
[This with a sigh.] 

I had a mighty impulse to destroy him, but it 
seemed to me that killing, in any ordinary way, 
would be too good for him. 

Once, when an odd-looking craft, with a vast coal- 
scuttle slanting aloft on the end of a beam, was 
steaming by in the distance, he indifferently drew 
attention to it, as one might to an object grown 

20 1 



MARK TWAIN 

wearisome through familiarity,- and observed that it 
was an ''alligator-boat." 

' ' An alligator-boat ? What's it for ?" 
**To dredge out alligators with." 
**Are they so thick as to be troublesome?" 
*'Well, not now, because the government keeps 
them down. But they used to be. Not everywhere; 
but in favorite places, here and there, where the 
river is wide and shoal — like Plum Point, and Stack 
Island, and so on — places they call alligator-beds." 
**Did they actually impede navigation?" 
"Years, ago, yes, in very low water; there was 
hardly a trip, then, that we didn't get aground on 
alligators." 

It seemed to me that I should certainly have to 
get out my tomahawk. However, I restrained my- 
self and said: 

"It must have been dreadful." 
"Yes, it was one of the main diffictdties about 
piloting. It was so hard to tell anything about the 

water; the d d things shift around so — ^never lie 

still five minutes at a time. You can tell a wind- 
reef, straight off, by the look of it; you can tell a 
break; you can tell a sand-reef — that's all easy; but 
an alligator-reef doesn't show up, worth anything. 
Nine times in ten you can't tell where the water is; 
and when you do see where it is, like as not it ain't 
there when you get there, the devils have swapped 
around so, meantime. Of course there were some 
few pilots that could judge of alligator- water nearly 
as well as they could of any other kind, but they had 
to have natural talent for it ; it wasn't a thing a body 

202 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

could learn, you had to be born with it. Let me see: 
There was Ben Thornburg, and Beck Jolly, and 
Squire Bell, and Horace Bixby, and Major Downing, 
and John Stevenson, and Billy Gordon, and Jim 
Brady, and George Ealer, and Billy Youngblood — 
all A I alligator-pilots. They could tell alligator- 
water as far as another Christian could tell whisky. 
Read it ? Ah, couldn't they, though ! I only wish I 
had as many dollars as they could read alligator- 
water a mile and a half off. Yes, and it paid them 
to do it, too. A good alHgator-pilot could always get 
fifteen hundred dollars a month. Nights, other 
people had to lay up for alligators, but those fellows 
never laid up for alligators; they never laid up for 
anything but fog. They could smell the best alli- 
gator-water — so it was said. I don't know whether 
it was so or not, and I think a body's got his hands 
full enough if he sticks to just what he knows him- 
self, without going around backing up other people's 
say-so's, though there's a plenty that ain't backward 
about doing it, as long as they can roust out some- 
thing wonderful to tell. Which is not the style of 
Robert Styles, by as much as three fathom — ^maybe 
quarter-Z^55." 

[My! Was this Rob Styles? This mustached and 
stately figure? A slim enough cub, in my time. 
How he has improved in comeliness in five-and- 
twenty years — and in the noble art of inflating his 
facts.] After these musings, I said aloud: 

''I should think that dredging out the alligators 
wouldn't have done much good, because they could 
come back again right away." 

203 



MARK TWAIN 

**If you had had as much experience of alligators as 
I have, you wouldn't talk like that. You dredge 
an alligator once and he's convinced. It's the last 
you hear of him. He wouldn't come back for pie. 
If there's one thing that an alligator is more down on 
than another, it's being dredged. Besides, they were 
not simply shoved out of the way; the most of the 
scoopful were scooped aboard; they emptied them 
into the hold; and when they had got a trip, they 
took them to Orleans to the government works.'* 

"What for?" 

**Why, to make soldier-shoes out of their hides. 
All the government shoes are made of alligator-hide. 
It makes the best shoes in the world. They last five 
years, and they won't absorb water. The alligator 
fishery is a government monopoly. All the alli- 
gators are government property — just like the live- 
oaks. You cut down a live-oak, and government 
fines you fifty dollars; you kill an alligator, and up 
you go for misprision of treason — Plucky duck if they 
don't hang you, too. And they will, if you're a 
Democrat. The buzzard is the sacred bird of the 
South, and you can't touch him; the alligator is the 
sacred bird of the government, and you've got to let 
him alone." 

"Do you ever get aground on the alligators now?" 

"Oh, no! it hasn't happened for years." 

"Well, then, why do they still keep the alligator- 
boats in service?" 

"Just for police duty — ^nothing more. They 
merely go up and down now and then. The present 
generation of alligators know them as easy as a 

204 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

burglar knows a roundsman; when they see one 
coming, they break camp and go for the woods." 

After rounding out and finishing up and polishing 
off the alligator business, he dropped easily and com- 
fortably into the historical vein, and told of some 
tremendous feats of half a dozen old-time steamboats 
of his acquaintance, dwelling at special length upon a 
certain extraordinary performance of his chief favor- 
ite among this distinguished fleet — and then adding : 

"That boat was the Cyclone — ^last trip she ever 
made — she sunk, that very trip; captain was Tom 
Ballou, the most immortal liar that ever I struck. 
He coiAldn't ever seem to tell the truth, in any kind 
of weather. Why, he would make you fairly shud- 
der. He was the most scandalous liar! I left him, 
finally; I couldn't stand it. The proverb says, 'like 
master, like man ' ; and if you stay with that kind of 
a man, you'll come imder suspicion by and by, just 
as sure as you live. He paid first-class wages; but 
said I, 'What's wages when your reputation's in 
danger?' So I let the wages go, and froze to my 
reputation. And I've never regretted it. Reputa- 
tion's worth everything, ain't it? That's the way 
I look at it. He had more selfish organs than any 
seven men in the world — all packed in the stern- 
sheets of his skull, of course, where they belonged. 
They weighed down the back of his head so that it 
made his nose tilt up in the air. People thought it 
was vanity, but it wasn't, it was malice. If you only 
saw his foot, you'd take him to be nineteen feet high, 
but he wasn't; it was because his foot was out of 
drawing. He was intended to be nineteen feet high, 

205 



MARK TWAIN 

no doubt, if his foot was made first, but he didn't 
get there; he was only five feet ten. That's what he 
was, and that's what he is. You take the Hes out of 
him, and he'll shrink to the size of your hat ; you take 
the maHce out of him, and he'll disappear. That 
Cyclone was a rattler to go, and the sweetest thing to 
steer that ever walked the waters. Set her amid- 
ships, in a big river, and just let her go; it was all 
you had to do. She would hold herself on a star 
all night, if you let her alone. You couldn't ever 
feel her rudder. It wasn't any more labor to steer 
her than it is to count the Republican vote in a South 
Carolina election. One morning, just at daybreak, 
the last trip she ever made, they took her rudder 
aboard to mend it; I didn't know anything about it; 
I backed her out from the wood-yard and went 
a- weaving down the river all serene. When I had 
gone about twenty-three miles, and made four hor- 
ribly crooked crossings — " 

''Without any rudder?" 

*'Yes — old Captain Tom appeared on the roof 
and began to find fault with me for rimning such a 
dark night — '* 

''Such a dark night f Why, you said — " 

"Never mind what I said — 'twas as dark as 
Egypt now, though pretty soon the moon began to 
rise, and — " 

"You mean the sun — ^because you started out just 
at break of — ^look here! Was this before you quitted 
the captain on account of his lying, or — " 

"It was before — oh, a long time before. And as 
I was saying, he — " 

206 



LIFE ON THE " MISSISSIPPI 

"But was this the trip she sunk, or was — " 

' ' Oh, no ! months afterward. And so the old man, 
he—" 

"Then she made two last trips, because you 
said—" 

He stepped back from the wheel, swabbing away 
his perspiration, and said : 

"Here!" (calling me by name) ''you take her and 
lie awhile — ^you're handier at it than I am : Trying 
to play yourself for a stranger and an innocent! 
Why, I knew you before you had spoken seven 
words ; and I made up my mind to find out what was 
your little game. It was to draw me out. Well, I 
let you, didn't I? Now take the wheel and finish 
the watch; and next time play fair, and you won't 
have to work your passage." 

Thus ended the fictitious-name business. And not 
six hours out from St. Louis! but I had gained a 
privilege, anyway, for I had been itching to get my 
hands on the wheel, from the beginning. I seemed 
to have forgotten the river, but I hadn't forgotten 
how to steer a steamboat, nor how to enjoy it, either. 



CHAPTER XXV 

FROM CAIRO TO HICKMAN 

THE scenery from St. Louis to Cairo — two hun- 
dred miles — is varied and beautiful. The hills 
were clothed in the fresh foliage of spring now, and 
wore a gracious and worthy setting for the broad 
river flowing between. Our trip began auspiciously, 
with a perfect day, as to breeze and sunshine, and 
our boat threw the miles out behind her with satis- 
factory despatch. 

We found a railway intruding at Chester, Illinois ; 
Chester has also a penitentiary now, and is other- 
wise marching on. At Grand Tower, too, there was 
a railway; and another at Cape Girardeau. The 
former town gets its name from a huge, squat pillar 
of rock, which stands up out of the water on the 
Missouri side of the river — a piece of nature's fanci- 
ful handiwork — and is one of the most picturesque 
features of the scenery of that region. For nearer 
or remoter neighbors, the Tower has the DeviFs 
Bake-oven — so called, perhaps, because it does not 
powerfully resemble anybody else's bake-oven; and 
the Devil's Tea-table — this latter a great smooth- 
surfaced mass of rock, with diminishing wine-glass 
stem, perched some fifty or sixty feet above the river, 
beside a beflowered and garlanded precipice, and 

208 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

sufficiently like a tea-table to answer for anybody, 
Devil or Christian. Away down the river we have 
the Devil's Elbow and the Devil's Race-course, and 
lots of other property of his which I cannot now call 
to mind. 

The town of Grand Tower was evidently a busier 
place than it had been in old times, but it seemed 
to need some repairs here and there, and a new coat 
of whitewash all over. Still, it was pleasant to me 
to see the old coat once more. "Uncle" Mumford, 
our second officer, said the place had been suffering 
from high water and consequently was not looking 
its best now. But he said it was not strange that 
it didn't waste whitewash on itself, for more lime 
was made there, and of a better quality, than any- 
where in the West ; and added, ' * On a dairy-farm you 
never can get any milk for your coffee, nor any sugar 
for it on a sugar-plantation; and it is against sense 
to go to a lime-town to hunt for whitewash." In my 
own experience I knew the first two items to be 
true: and also that people who sell candy don't care 
for candy; therefore there was plausibility in Uncle 
Mumford's final observation that ''people who make 
lime run more to religion than whitewash." Uncle 
Mumford said, further, that Grand Tower was a 
great coaling center and a prospering place. 

Cape Girardeau is situated on a hillside, and makes 
a handsome appearance. There is a great Jesuit 
school for boys at the foot of the town by the river. 
Uncle Mumford said it had as high a reputation for 
thoroughness as any similar institution in Missouri. 
There was another college higher up on an airy 

209 



MARK TWAIN 

summit — a bright new edifice, picturesquely and 
peculiariy towered and pinnacled — a sort of gigantic 
casters, with the cruets all complete. Uncle Mum- 
ford said that Cape Girardeau was the Athens of 
Missouri, and contained several colleges besides those 
already mentioned; and all of them on a religious 
basis of one kind or another. He directed my atten- 
tion to what he called the "strong and pervasive 
religious look of the town," but I could not see that 
it looked more religious than the other hill towns 
with the same slope and built of the same kind of 
bricks. Partialities often make people see more than 
really exists. 

Uncle Mumford has been thirty years a mate on 
the river. He is a man of practical sense and a level 
head ; has observed ; has had much experience of one 
sort and another; has opinions; has, also, just a per- 
ceptible dash of poetry in his composition, an easy 
gift of speech, a thick growl in his voice, and an 
oath or two where he can get at them when the 
exigencies of his office require a spiritual lift. He is 
a mate of the blessed old-time kind ; and goes gravely 

d ing around, when there is work to the fore, in 

a way to mellow the ex-steamboatman's heart with 
sweet, soft longings for the vanished days that shall 

come no more. ''Git up, there, you! Going 

to be all day? Why d'n't you say you was petrified 
in your hind legs, before you shipped?" 

He is a steady man with his crew; kind and just, 
but firm; so they like him, and stay with him. He 
is still in the slouchy garb of the old generation of 
mates; but next trip the Anchor Line will have him 

2IO 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

in uniform — a natty blue naval uniform, with brass 
buttons, along with all the officers of the line — and 
then he will be a totally different style of scenery 
from what he is now. 

Uniforms on the Mississippi! It beats all the 
other changes put together, for surprise. Still, there 
is another surprise — that it was not made fifty years 
ago. It is so manifestly sensible that it might have 
been thought of earHer, one would suppose. During 
fifty years, out there, the innocent passenger in need 
of help and information has been mistaking the mate 
for the cook, and the captain for the barber — and 
being roughly entertained for it, too. But his 
troubles are ended now. And the greatly improved 
aspect of the boat's staff is another advantage 
achieved by the dress-reform period. 

Steered down the bend below Cape Girardeau. 
They used to call it "Steersman's Bend"; plain sail- 
ing and plenty of water in it, always; about the only 
place in the Upper River that a new cub was allowed 
to take a boat through, in low water. 

Thebes, at the head of the Grand Chain, and 
Commerce at the foot of it, were towns easily remem- 
berable, as they had not undergone conspicuous 
alteration. Nor the Chain, either — ^in the nature of 
things; for it is a chain of sunken rocks admirably 
arranged to capture and kill steamboats on bad 
nights. A good many steamboat corpses lie buried 
there, out of sight; among the rest my first friend, 
the Paul Jones; she knocked her bottom out, and 
went down like a pot, so the historian told me — 
Uncle Mumford. He said she had a gray mare 

211 



MARK TWAIN 

aboard, and a preacher. To me, this sufSciently 
accounted for the disaster; as it did, of course, to 
Mumford, who added : 

"But there are many ignorant people who would 
scoff at such a matter, and call it superstition. But 
you will always notice that they are people who have 
never traveled with a gray mare and a preacher. I 
went down the river in such company. We grounded 
at Bloody Island; we grounded at Hanging Dog; we 
grounded just below this same Commerce ; we jolted 
Beaver Dam Rock; we hit one of the worst breaks 
in the 'Graveyard' behind Goose Island; we had a 
roustabout killed in a fight ; we burst a boiler ; broke 
a shaft; collapsed a flue; and went into Cairo with 
nine feet of water in the hold — may have been more, 
may have been less. I remember it as if it were 
yesterday. The men lost their heads with terror. 
They painted the mare blue, in sight of town, and 
threw the preacher overboard, or we should not have 
arrived at all. The preacher was fished out and 
saved. He acknowledged, himself, that he had been 
to blame. I remember it all as if it were yesterday." 

That this combination — of preacher and gray mare 
— should breed calamity seems strange, and at first 
glance imbelievable ; but the fact is fortified by so 
much unassailable proof that to doubt is to dishonor 
reason. I myself remember a case where a captain 
was warned by numerous friends against taking a 
gray mare and a preacher with him, but persisted in 
his purpose in spite of all that could be said ; and the 
same day — it may have been the next, and some say 
it was, though I think it was the same day — ^he got 

212 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

drunk and fell down the hatchway and was borne to 
his home a corpse. This is literally true. 

No vestige of Hat Island is left now; every shred 
of it is washed away. I do not even remember 
what part of the river it used to be in, except that 
it was between St. Louis and Cairo somewhere. It 
was a bad region — all aroimd and about Hat Island, 
in early days. A farmer, who lived on the Illinois 
shore there, said that twenty-nine steamboats had 
left their bones stnmg along within sight from his 
house. Between St. Louis and Cairo the steamboat 
wrecks average one to the mile — two himdred wrecks, 
altogether. 

I could recognize big changes from Commerce 
down. Beaver Dam Rock was out in the middle of 
the river now, and throwing a prodigious "break"; 
it used to be close to the shore, and boats went down 
outside of it. A big island that used to be away 
out in mid-river has retired to the Missouri shore, 
and boats do not go near it any more. The island 
called Jacket Pattern is whittled down to a wedge 
now, and is booked for early destruction. Goose 
Island is all gone but a little dab, the size of a steam- 
boat. The perilous "Graveyard," among whose 
mmiberless wrecks we used to pick our way so slowly 
and gingerly, is far away from the channel now, and 
a terror to nobody. One of the islands formerly 
called the Two Sisters is gone entirely; the other, 
which used to lie close to the Illinois shore, is now on 
the Missouri side, a mile away; it is joined solidly 
to the shore, and it takes a sharp eye to see where 
the seam is — but it is Illinois ground yet, and the 

213 



MARK TWAIN 

people who live on it have to ferry themselves over 
and work the Illinois roads and pay Illinois taxes: 
singular state of things! 

Near the mouth of the river several islands were 
missing — washed away. Cairo was still there — 
easily visible across the long, flat point upon whose 
further verge it stands; but we had to steam a long 
way around to get to it. Night fell as we were 
going out of the "Upper River" and meeting the 
floods of the Ohio. We dashed along without anxi- 
ety ; for the hidden rock which used to lie right in the 
way has moved up-stream a long distance out of 
the channel; or rather, about one county has gone 
into the river from the Missouri point, and the Cairo 
point has "made down" and added to its long 
tongue of territory correspondingly. The Missis- 
sippi is a just and equitable river; it never tumbles 
one man's farm overboard without building a new 
farm just like it for that man's neighbor. This 
keeps down hard feelings. 

Going into Cairo, we came near killing a steam- 
boat which paid no attention to our whistle and then 
tried to cross our bows. By doing some strong 
backing, we saved him; which was a great loss, for 
he would have made good literature. 

Cairo is a brisk town now; and is substantially 
built, and has a city look about it which is in notice- 
able contrast to its former estate, as per Mr. Dickens's 
portrait of it. However, it was already building with 
bricks when I had seen it last — which was when 
Colonel (now General) Grant was drilling his first 
command there. Uncle Mumford says the libraries 

214 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

and Sunday-schools have done a good work in 
Cairo, as well as the brick-masons. Cairo has a 
heavy railroad and river trade, and her situation at 
the junction of the two great rivers is so advantage- 
ous that she cannot well help prospering. 

When I turned out in the morning, we had passed 
Columbus, Kentucky, and were approaching Hick- 
man, a pretty town perched on a handsome hill. 
Hickman is in a rich tobacco region, and formerly 
enjoyed a great and lucrative trade in that staple, 
collecting it there in her warehouses from a large 
area of coiintry and shipping it by boat ; but Uncle 
Mumford says she built a railway to facilitate this 
commerce a little more, and he thinks it facilitated 
it the wrong way — took the bulk of the trade out 
of her hands by "collaring it along the line without 
gathering it at her doors." 



CHAPTER XXVI 

UNDER FIRE 

TALK began to run upon the war now, for we 
were getting down into the upper edge of the 
former battle-stretch by this time. Columbus was 
just behind us, so there was a good deal said about 
the famous battle of Belmont. Several of the boat's 
officers had seen active service in the Mississippi 
war-fleet. I gathered that they found themselves 
sadly out of their element in that kind of business at 
first, but afterward got accustomed to it, reconciled 
to it, and more or less at home in it. One of our 
pilots had his first war experience in the Belmont 
fight, as a pilot on a boat in the Confederate service. 
I had often had a curiosity to know how a green hand 
might feel, in his maiden battle, perched all solitary 
and alone on high in a pilot-house, a target for Tom, 
Dick, and Harry, and nobody at his elbow to shame 
him from showing the white feather when matters 
grew hot and perilous around him; so to me his 
story was valuable — it filled a gap for me which all 
histories had left till that time empty. 

THE pilot's first BATTLE 

He said: 

"It was the 7th of November. The fight began 
at seven in the morning. I was on the R. H. W, 

216 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

Hill. Took over a load of troops from Columbus. 
Came back, and took over a battery of artillery. 
My partner said he was going to see the fight ; wanted 
me to go along. I said, No, I wasn't anxious, I 
would look at it from the pilot-house. He said I 
was a coward, and left. 

"That fight was an awful sight. General Cheat- 
ham made his men strip their coats off and throw 

them in a pile, and said, 'Now follow me to h 1 

or victory!' I heard him say that from the pilot- 
house; and then he galloped in, at the head of his 
troops. Old General Pillow, with his white hair, 
moimted on a white horse, sailed in, too ; leading his 
troops as lively as a boy. By and by the Federals 
chased the rebels back, and here they came ! tearing 
along, everybody for himself and Devil take the hind- 
most ! and down under the bank they scrambled, and 
took shelter. I was sitting with my legs hanging 
out of the pilot-house window. All at once I noticed 
a whizzing sound passing my ear. Judged it was a 
bullet. I didn't stop to think about anything, I 
just tilted over backward and landed on the floor, 
and stayed there. The balls came booming around. 
Three cannon-balls went through the chimney ; one 
ball took off the corner of the pilot-house; shells 
were screaming and bursting all around. Mighty 
warm times — I wished I hadn't come. I lay there 
on the pilot-house floor, while the shots came faster 
and faster. I crept in behind the big stove, in the 
middle of the pilot-house. Presently a minie-ball 
came through the stove, and just grazed my head 
and cut my hat. I judged it was time to go away 

217 



MARK TWAIN 

from there. The captain was on the roof with a red- 
headed major from Memphis — a fine-looking man. 
I heard him say he wanted to leave here, but 'that 
pilot is killed.' I crept over to the starboard side 
to pull the bell to set her back; raised up and took 
a look, and I saw about fifteen shot -holes through 
the window-panes; had come so lively I hadn't 
noticed them. I glanced out on the water, and the 
spattering shot were like a hail-storm. I thought 
best to get out of that place. I went down the pilot- 
house guy head first — not feet first but head first — 
slid down — before I struck the deck, the captain said 
we must leave there. So I climbed up the guy and 
got on the floor again. About that time they col- 
lared my partner and were bringing him up to the 
pilot-house between two soldiers. Somebody had 
said I was killed. He put his head in and saw me 
on the floor reaching for the backing-bells. He said 

*0h, h 1! he ain't shot,' and jerked away from 

the men who had him b}^ the collar, and ran below. 
We were there until three o'clock in the afternoon, 
and then got away all right. 

''The next time I saw my partner, I said, 'Now, 
come out; be honest, and tell me the truth. Where 
did you go when you went to see that battle ? ' He 
says, 'I went down in the hold.' 

"All through that fight I was scared nearly to 
death. I hardly knew anything, I was so frightened ; 
but you see, nobody knew that but me. Next day 
General Polk sent for me, and praised me for my 
bravery and gallant conduct. 

"I never said anything, I let it go at that. I 
218 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

judged it wasn't so, but it was not for me to contra- 
dict a general officer. 

''Pretty soon after that I was sick, and used up, 
and had to go off to the Hot Springs. When there, 
I got a good many letters from commanders saying 
they wanted me to come back. I declined, because 
I wasn't well enough or strong enough; but I kept 
still, and kept the reputation I had made." 

A plain story, straightforwardly told; but Mum- 
ford told me that that pilot had ' ' gilded that scare of 
his, in spots"; that his subsequent career in the war 
was proof of it. 

We struck down through the chute of Island 
No. 8, and I went below and fell into conversation 
with a passenger, a handsome man, with easy car- 
riage and an intelligent face. We were approaching 
Island No. lo, a place so celebrated during the war. 
This gentleman's home was on the main shore in 
its neighborhood. I had some talk with him about 
the war-times ; but presently the discourse fell upon 
**feuds," for in no part of the South has the vendetta 
flourished more briskly, or held out longer between 
warring families, than in this particular region. 
This gentleman said: 

** There's been more than one feud around here, 
in old times, but I reckon the first one was between 
the Darnells and the Watsons. Nobody don't know 
now what the first quarrel was about, it's so long 
ago; the Darnells and the Watsons don't know, if 
there's any of them Hving, which I don't think there 
is. Some says it was about a horse or a cow — any- 
WSLJ, it was a little matter; the money in it wasn't 

219 



MARK TWAIN 

of no consequence — none in the world — both families 
was rich. The thing could have been fixed up, easy 
enough; but no, that wouldn't do. Rough words 
had been passed; and so, nothing but blood could 
fix it up after that. That horse or cow, whichever 
it was, cost sixty years of killing or crippling ! Every 
year or so somebody was shot, on one side or the 
other; and as fast as one generation was laid out, 
their sons took up the feud and kept it a-going. 
And it's just as I say; they went on shooting each 
other, year in and year out — making a kind of a 
religion of it, you see — till they'd done forgot, long 
ago, what it was all about. Wherever a Darnell 
caught a Watson, or a Watson caught a Darnell, one 
of 'em was going to get hurt — only question was, 
which of them got the drop on the other. They'd 
shoot one another down, right in the presence of the 
family. They didn't hunt for each other, but when 
they happened to meet, they pulled and begun. 
Men would shoot boys, boys would shoot men. A 
man shot a boy twelve years old — happened on him 
in the woods and didn't give him no chance. If he 
had 'a' given him a chance, the boy'd 'a' shot him. 
Both families belonged to the same church (every- 
body around here is religious) ; through all this fifty 
or sixty years' fuss, both tribes was there every 
Sunday, to worship. They lived each side of the 
line, and the church was at a landing called Com- 
promise. Half the chtirch and half the aisle was in 
Kentucky, the other half in Tennessee. Sundays 
you'd see the families drive up, all in their Sunday 
clothes — ^men, women, and children — and file up the 

220 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

aisle, and set down, quiet and orderly, one lot on 
the Tennessee side of the church and the other on the 
Kentucky side; and the men and boys would lean 
their guns up against the wall, handy, and then all 
hands would join in with the prayer and praise; 
though they say the man next the aisle didn't kneel 
down, along with the rest of the family; kind of 
stood guard. I don't know; never was at that 
church in my life; but I remember that that's what 
used to be said. 

* ' Twenty or twenty -five years ago one of the feud 
families caught a yoimg man of nineteen out and 
killed him. Don't remember whether it was the 
Darnells and Watsons, or one of the other feuds ; but 
anyway, this young man rode up — steamboat laying 
there at the time — and the first thing he saw was a 
whole gang of the enemy. He jumped down behind 
a wood-pile, but they rode around and begun on 
him, he firing back, and they galloping and cavorting 
and yelling and banging away with all their might. 
Think he wounded a couple of them ; but they closed 
in on him and chased him into the river; and as he 
swiim along down-stream, they followed along the 
bank and kept on shooting at him, and when he 
struck shore he was dead. Windy Marshall told me 
about it. He saw it. He was captain of the boat. 

''Years ago, the Darnells was so thinned out that 
the old man and his two sons concluded they'd leave 
the country. They started to take steamboat just 
above No. lo; but the Watsons got wind of it; and 
they arrived just as the two young Darnells was 
walking up the companionway with their wives on 

221 



MARK TWAIN 

their arms. The fight begun then, and they never 
got no further — both of them killed. After that, old 
Darnell got into trouble with the man that run the 
ferry, and the ferryman got the worst of it — and 
died. But his friends shot old Darnell through and 
through — ^filled him full of bullets, and ended him." 

The cotmtry gentleman who told me these things 
had been reared in ease and comfort, was a man of 
good parts, and was college-bred. His loose gram- 
mar was the fruit of careless habit, not ignorance. 
This habit among educated men in the West is not 
imiversal, but it is prevalent — prevalent in the 
towns, certainly, if not in the cities ; and to a degree 
which one cannot help noticing, and marveling at. 
I heard a Westerner, who would be accoimted a 
highly educated man in any country, say, "Never 
mind, it don't make no difference, anyway." A life- 
long resident who was present heard it, but it made 
no impression upon her. She was able to recall the 
fact afterward, when reminded of it; but she con- 
fessed that the words had not grated upon her ear 
at the time — a confession which suggests that if 
educated people can hear such blasphemous gram- 
mar, from such a sotuce, and be unconscious of the 
deed, the crime must be tolerably common — so 
common that the general ear has become dulled by 
familiarity with it, and is no longer alert, no longer 
sensitive to such affronts. 

No one in the world speaks blemishless grammar; 
no one has ever written it — no one, either in the world 
or out of it (taking the Scriptures for evidence on the 
latter point) ; therefore it would not be fair to exact 

222 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

grammatical perfection from the peoples of the 
Valley; but they and all other peoples may justly be 
required to refrain from knowingly and purposely de- 
bauching their grammar. 

I found the river greatly changed at Island No. lo. 
The island which I remembered was some three 
miles long and a quarter of a mile wide, heavily 
timbered, and lay near the Kentucky shore — ^within 
two hundred yards of it, I should say. Now, how- 
ever, one had to himt for it with a spy-glass. Noth- 
ing was left of it but an insignificant Httle tuft, and 
this was no longer near the Kentucky shore; it was 
clear over against the opposite shore, a mile away. 
In war-times the island had been an important 
place, for it commanded the situation; and, being 
heavily fortified, there was no getting by it. It lay 
between the upper and lower divisions of the Union 
forces, and kept them separate, until a junction was 
finally effected across the Missouri neck of land; but 
the island being itself joined to that neck now, the 
wide river is without obstruction. 

In this region the river passes from Kentucky into 
Tennessee, back into Missoiui, then back into Ken- 
tucky, and thence into Tennessee again. So a mile 
or two of Missouri sticks over into Tennessee. 

The town of New Madrid was looking very im- 
well; but otherwise unchanged from its former con- 
dition and aspect. Its blocks of frame houses were 
still grouped in the same old flat plain, and environed 
by the same old forests. It was as tranquil as for- 
merly, and apparently had neither grown nor dimin- 
ished in size. It was said that the recent high water 

223 



MARK TWAIN 

had invaded it and damaged its looks. This was 
surprising news; for in low water the river-bank is 
very high there (fifty feet), and in my day an overflow 
had always been considered an impossibility. This 
present flood of 1882 will doubtless be celebrated in 
the river's history for several generations before a 
deluge of like magnitude shall be seen. It put all 
the unprotected lowlands under water, from Cairo 
to the mouth; it broke down the levees in a great 
many places, on both sides of the river; and in some 
regions south, when the flood was at its highest, the 
Mississippi was seventy miles wide ! a number of lives 
were lost, and the destruction of property was 
fearful. The crops were destroyed, houses washed 
away, and shelterless men and cattle forced to take 
refuge on scattering elevations here and there in 
field and forest, and wait in peril and suffering until 
the boats put in commission by the national and 
local governments, and by newspaper enterprise, 
could come and rescue them. The properties of 
multitudes of people were under water for months, 
and the poorer ones must have starved by the hun- 
dred if succor had not been promptly afforded.^ The 
water had been falling during a considerable time 
now, yet as a rule we foimd the banks still imder 
water. 

^For a detailed and interesting description of the great flood, 
written on board of the New Orleans Times-Democrat's relief boat, 
see Appendix A. 



CHAPTER XXVII 

SOME IMPORTED ARTICLES 

WE met two steamboats at New Madrid. Two 
steamboats in sight at once ! An infrequent 
spectacle now in the lonesome Mississippi. The lone- 
liness of this solemn, stupendous flood is impressive 
— and depressing. League after league, and still 
league after league, it poiirs its chocolate tide along, 
between its solid forest walls, its almost tintenanted 
shores, with seldom a sail or a moving object of 
any kind to disturb the surface and break the mo- 
notony of the blank, watery solitude; and so the 
day goes, the night comes, and again the day — and 
still the same, night after night and day after day 
— majestic, imchanging sameness of serenity, re- 
pose, tranquillity, lethargy, vacancy — symbol of eter- 
nity, realization of the heaven pictured by priest and 
prophet, and longed for by the good and thought- 
less! 

Immediately after the War of 1812 tourists began 
to come to America, from England; scattering ones 
at first, then a sort of procession of them — a. proces- 
sion which kept up its plodding, patient march 
through the land during many, many years. Each 
tourist took notes, and went home and published a 
book — a book which was usually calm, truthful, 

225 



MARK TWAIN 

reasonable, kind; but which seemed just the reverse 
to our tender-footed progenitors. A glance at these 
tourist-books shows us that in certain of its aspects 
the Mississippi has undergone no change since those 
strangers visited it, but remains to-day about as it 
was then. The emotions produced in those foreign 
breasts by these aspects were not all formed on one 
pattern, of course; they had to be various, along at 
first, because the earlier toiu-ists were obliged to 
originate their emotions, whereas in older countries 
one can always borrow emotions from one's prede- 
cessors. And, mind you, emotions are among the 
toughest things in the world to manufacture out 
of whole cloth; it is easier to manufacture seven 
facts than one emotion. Captain Basil Hall, R.N., 
writing fifty-five years ago, says: 

Here I caught the first glimpse of the object I had so long 
wished to behold, and felt myself amply repaid at that moment 
for all the trouble I had experienced in coming so far; and stood 
looking at the river flowing past till it was too dark to distinguish 
anything. But it was not until I had visited the same spot a 
dozen times that I came to a right comprehension of the grandeur 
of the scene. 

Following are Mrs. Trollope's emotions. She is 
writing a few months later in the same year, 1827, 
and is coming in at the mouth of the Mississippi: 

The first indication of our approach to land was the appear- 
ance of this mighty river pouring forth its muddy mass of waters, 
and mingling with the deep blue of the Mexican Gulf. I never 
beheld a scene so utterly desolate as this entrance of the Missis- 
sippi. Had Dante seen it, he might have drawn images of 
another Bolgia from its horrors. One only object rears itself 
above the eddying waters; this is the mast of a vessel long since 

226 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

wrecked in attempting to cross the bar, and it still stands, a 
dismal witness of the destruction that has been, and a boding 
prophet of that which is to come. 

Emotions of Hon. Charles Augustus Murray (near 
St. Louis), seven years later: 

It is only when you ascend the mighty current for fifty or a 
hundred miles, and use the eye of imagination as well as that of 
nature, that you begin to understand all his might and majesty. 
You see him fertilizing a boundless valley, bearing along in his 
course the trophies of his thousand victories over the shattered 
forest — here carrying away large masses of soil with all their 
growth, and there forming islands destined at some future period 
to be the residence of man; and while indulging in this prospect, 
it is then time for reflection to suggest that the current before 
you has flowed through two or three thousand miles, and has yet 
to travel one thousand three hundred more before reaching its 
ocean destination. 

Receive, now, the emotions of Captain Marryat, 
R.N., author of the sea tales, \vTiting in 1837, three 
years after Mr. Murray: 

Never, perhaps, in the records of nations, was there an in- 
stance of a century of such unvarying and unmitigated crime as 
is to be collected from the history of the turbulent and blood- 
stained Mississippi. The stream itself appears as if appropriate 
for the deeds which have been committed. It is not Hke most 
rivers, beautiful to the sight, bestowing fertility in its course; 
not one that the eye loves to dwell upon as it sweeps along, 
nor can you wander upon its bank, or trust yourself without 
danger to its stream. It is a furious, rapid, desolating torrent, 
loaded with alluvial soil; and few of those who are received into 
its waters ever rise again, ^ or can support themselves long upon 
its surface without assistance from some friendly log. It con- 
tains the coarsest and most uneatable of fish, such as catfish 

* There was a foolish superstition of some little prevalence in that 
day that the Mississippi would neither buoy up a swimmer nor 
permit a drowned person's body to rise to the surface. 

227 



MARK TWAIN 

and such genus, and, as you descend, its banks are occupied 
with the fetid alligator, while the panther basks at its edge in 
the cane-brakes, aknost impervious to man. Pouring its im- 
petuous waters through wild tracts covered with trees of little 
value except for firewood, it sweeps down whole forests in its 
course, which disappear in tumultuous confusion, whirled away 
by the stream now loaded with the masses of soil which nour- 
ished their roots, often blocking up and changing for a time the 
channel of the river, which, as if in anger at its being opposed, 
inundates and devastates the whole country round; and as soon 
as it forces its way through its former channel, plants in every 
direction the uprooted monarchs of the forest (upon whose 
branches the bird will never again perch, or the racoon, the 
opossum, or the squirrel climb) as traps to the adventurous 
navigators of its waters by steam, who, borne down by these 
concealed dangers which pierce through the planks, very often 
have not time to steer for and gain the shore before they sink 
to the bottom. There are no pleasing associations connected 
with the great common sewer of the Western America, which 
pours out its mud into the Mexican Gulf, polluting the clear 
blue sea for many miles beyond its mouth. It is a river of 
desolation; and instead of reminding you, Hke other beautiful 
rivers, of an angel which has descended for the benefit of man, 
you imagine it a devil, whose energies have been only overcome 
by the wonderful power of steam. 

It is pretty crude literature for a man accustomed 
to handling a pen; still, as a panorama of the emo- 
tions sent weltering through this noted visitor*s 
breast by the aspect and traditions of the "great 
common sewer," it has a value. A value, though 
marred in the matter of statistics by inaccuracies; 
for the catfish is a plenty good enough fish for any- 
body, and there are no panthers that are "impervi- 
ous to man." 

Later still comes Alexander Mackay, of the Middle 
Temple, Barrister at Law, with a better digestion, 
and no catfish dinner aboard, and feels as follows: 

228 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

The Mississippi! It was with indescribable emotions that I 
first felt myself afloat upon its waters. How often in my school- 
boy dreams, and in my waking visions afterward, had my im- 
agination pictured to itself the lordly stream, rolling with tu- 
multuous current through the boundless region to which it has 
given its name, and gathering into itself, in its course to the 
ocean, the tributary waters of almost every latitude in the 
temperate zone! Here it was then in its reality, and I, at length, 
steaming against its tide. I looked upon it with that reverence 
with which every one must regard a great feature of external 
nature. 

So much for the emotions. The tourists, one and 
all, remark upon the deep, brooding loneliness and 
desolation of the vast river. Captain Basil Hall, 
who saw it at flood stage, says: 

Sometimes we passed along distances of twenty or thirty 
miles without seeing a single habitation. An artist, in search 
of hints for a painting of the deluge, would here have found them 
in abundance. 

The first shall be last, etc. Just two hundred 
years ago, the old original first and gallantest of all 
the foreign tourists, pioneers, head of the procession, 
ended his weary and tedious discovery voyage down 
the solemn stretches of the great river — La Salle, 
whose name will last as long as the river itself shall 
last. We quote from Mr. Parkman: 

And now they neared their journey's end. On the 6th of 
April, the river divided itself into three broad channels. La 
Salle followed that of the west, and D'Autray that of the east; 
while Tonty took the middle passage. As he drifted down the 
turbid current, between the low and marshy shores, the brackish 
water changed to brine, and the breeze grew fresh with the salt 
breath of the sea. Then the broad bosom of the great Gulf 
opened on his sight, tossing its restless billows, Hmitless, voiceless, 
lonely as when bom of chaos, without a sail, without a sign of life. 

229 



MARK TWAIN 

Then, on a spot of solid ground, La Salle reared 
a column ** bearing the arms of France; the French- 
men were mustered under arms; and while the New 
England Indians and their squaws looked on in 
wondering silence, they chanted the Te Deum, the 
Exaudiat, and the D amine , salvum fac re gem.'' 

Then, while the musketry volleyed and rejoicing 
shouts burst forth, the victorious discoverer planted 
the column, and made proclamation in a loud voice, 
taking formal possession of the river and the vast 
countries watered by it, in the name of the King. 
The column bore this inscription: 

LOUIS LE GRAND, ROY DE FRANCE ET DE NAVARRE, 
REGNE; LE NEUVIEME AVRIL, 1 682. 

New Orleans intended to fittingly celebrate, this 
present year, the bicentennial anniversary of this 
illustrious event; but when the time came, all her 
energies and surplus money were required in other 
directions, for the flood was upon the land then, 
making havoc and devastation everywhere. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

UNCLE MUMFORD UNLOADS 

ALL day we swung along down the river, and had 
. the stream almost wholly to oiirselves. For- 
meriy, at such a stage of the water, we should have 
passed acres of lumber-rafts and dozens of big coal- 
barges; also occasional Httle trading-scows, peddHng 
along from farm to farm, with the peddler's family 
on board; possibly a random scow, bearing a humble 
Hamlet & Co. on an itinerant dramatic trip. But 
these were all absent. Far along in the day we saw 
one steamboat; just one, and no more. She was 
lying at rest in the shade, within the wooded mouth 
of the Obion River. The spy-glass revealed the fact 
that she was named for me — or he was named for 
me, whichever you prefer. As this was the first 
time I had ever encountered this species of honor, it 
seems excusable to mention it, and at the same time 
call the attention of the authorities to the tardiness 
of my recognition of it. 

Noted a big change in the river at Island 21. It 
was a very large island, and used to lie out toward 
midstream; but it is joined fast to the main shore 
now, and has retired from business as an island. 

As we approached famous and formidable Plum 
Point darkness fell, but that was nothing to shudder 

231 



MARK TWAIN 

about — ^in these modem times. For now the nation- 
al government has turned the Mississippi into a 
sort of two- thousand-mile torchlight procession. In 
the head of every crossing, and in the foot of every 
crossing, the govemm-ent has set up a clear-burning 
lamp. You are never entirely in the dark, now; 
there is always a beacon in sight, either before you, 
or behind you, or abreast. One might almost say 
that lamps have been squandered there. Dozens of 
crossings are lighted which were not shoal when they 
were created, and have never been shoal since; cross- 
ings so plain, too, and also so straight, that a steam- 
boat can take herself through them without any 
help, after she has been through once. Lamps in 
such places are of course not wasted ; it is much more 
convenient and comfortable for a pilot to hold on 
them than on a spread of formless blackness that 
won't stay still; and money is saved to the boat, at 
the same time, for she can of course make more 
miles with her rudder amidships than she can with 
it squared across her stem and holding her back. 

But this thing has knocked the romance out of 
piloting, to a large extent. It and some other things 
together have knocked all the romance out of it. 
For instance, the peril from snags is not now what 
it once was. The government's snag-boats go pa- 
trolling up and down, in these matter-of-fact days, 
pulling the river's teeth; they have rooted out all 
the old clusters which made many localities so 
formidable; and they allow no new ones to collect. 
Formerly, if your boat got away from you, on a 
black night, and broke for the woods, it was an 

232 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

anxious time with you; so was it, also, when you 
were groping your way through soHdified darkness in 
a narrow chute, but all that is changed now — ^you 
flash out your electric light, transform night into 
day in the twinkling of an eye, and your perils and 
anxieties are at an end. Horace Bixby and George 
Ritchie have charted the crossings and laid out the 
courses by compass; they have invented a lamp to 
go with the chart, and have patented the whole. 
With these helps, one may run in the fog now, with 
considerable security, and with a confidence unknown 
in the old days. 

With these abundant beacons, and the banishment 
of snags, plenty of daylight in a box and ready to 
be turned on whenever needed, and a chart compass 
to fight the fog with, piloting, at a good stage of 
water, is now nearly as safe and simple as driving 
stage, and is hardly more than three times as ro- 
mantic. 

And now, in these new days of infinite change, the 
Anchor Line have raised the captain above the pilot 
by giving him the bigger wages of the two. This 
was going far, but they have not stopped there. 
They have decreed that the pilot shall remain at his 
post, and stand his watch clear through, whether the 
boat be under way or tied up to the shore. We, that 
were once the aristocrats of the river, can't go to 
bed now, as we used to do, and sleep while a himdred 
tons of freight are lugged aboard ; no, we must sit in 
the pilot-house; and keep awake, too. Verily we 
are being treated like a parcel of mates and engineers. 
The government has taken away the romance of 

233 



MARK TWAIN 

our calling; the Company has taken away its state 
and dignity. 

Plum Point looked as it had always looked by 
night, with the exception that now there were bea- 
cons to mark the crossings, and also a lot of other 
lights on the Point and along its shore; these latter 
glinting from the fleet of the United States River 
Commission, and from a village which the officials 
have built on the land for offices and for the em- 
ployees of the service. The military engineers of the 
Commission have taken upon their shoulders the 
job of making the Mississippi over again — a job 
transcended in size by only the original job of creat- 
ing it. They are building wing-dams here and there 
to deflect the current; and dikes to confine it in 
narrower bounds; and other dikes to make it stay 
there; and for unnumbered miles along the Missis- 
sippi they are felling the timber-front for fifty yards 
back, with the purpose of shaving the bank down to 
low-water mark with the slant of a house-roof, and 
ballasting it with stones; and in many places they 
have protected the wasting shores with rows of piles. 
One who knows the Mississippi will promptly aver 
— not aloud but to himself — that ten thousand River 
Commissions, with the mines of the world at their 
back, cannot tame that lawless stream, cannot curb 
it or confine it, cannot say to it, "Go here," or "Go 
there," and make it obey; cannot save a shore which 
it has sentenced; cannot bar its path with an ob- 
struction which it will not tear down, dance over, 
and laugh at. But a discreet man will not put these 
things into spoken words; for the West Point engi- 

234 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

neers have not their superiors anywhere; they know 
all that can be known of their abstruse science ; and 
so, since they conceive that they can fetter and hand- 
cuff that river and boss him, it is but wisdom for 
the unscientific man to keep still, lie low, and wait 
till they do it. Captain Eads, with his jetties, has 
done a work at the mouth of the Mississippi which 
seemed clearly impossible ; so we do not feel full con- 
fidence now to prophesy against like impossibilities. 
Otherwise one would pipe out and say the Commis- 
sion might as well bully the comets in their courses 
and imdertake to make them behave, as try to bully 
the Mississippi into right and reasonable conduct. 

I consulted Uncle Mumford concerning this and 
cognate matters; and I give here the result, steno- 
graphically reported, and therefore to be relied on 
as being full- and correct; except that I have here 
and there left out remarks which were addressed to 
the men, such as ' ' Where in blazes are you going with 
that barrel now?" and which seemed to me to break 
the flow of the written statement, without com- 
pensating by adding to its information or its clear- 
ness. Not that I have ventiu-ed to strike out all 
such interjections;, I have removed only those which 
were obviously irrelevant; wherever one occurred 
which I felt any question about, I have judged it 
safest to let it remain. 

UNCLE MUMFORD's IMPRESSIONS 

Uncle Mumford said: 

**As long as I have been mate of a steamboat — 
thirty years — I have watched this river and studied 

23s 



MARK TWAIN 

it. Maybe I could have learned more about it 
at West Point, but if I believe it I wish I may- 
be WHAT are you sucking your fingers there forf — 
Collar that kag of nails! Four years at West Point, 
and plenty of books and schooling, will learn a man 
a good deal, I reckon, but it won't learn him the 
river. You turn one of those little European rivers 
over to this Commission, with its hard bottom and 
clear water, and it would just be a holiday job for 
them to wall it, and pile it, and dike it, and tame it 
down, and boss it aroimd, and make it go wherever 
they wanted it to, and stay where they put it, and 
do just as they said, every time. But this ain't that 
kind of a river. They have started in here with big 
confidence, and the best intentions in the world ; but 
they are going to get left. What does Ecclesiastes 
vii 13 say? Says enough to knock their little game 
galley- west, don't it ? Now you look at their meth- 
ods once. There at Devil's Island, in the Upper 
River, they wanted the water to go one way, the 
water wanted to go another. So they put up a 
stone wall. But what does the river care for a stone 
wall? When it got ready, it just bulged through it. 
Maybe they can build another that will stay; that 
is, up there — but not down here they can't. Down 
here in the Lower River, they drive some pegs to 
turn the water away from the shore and stop it 
from slicing off the bank; very well, don't it go 
straight over and cut somebody else's bank? Cer- 
tainly. Are they going to peg all the banks ? Why, 
they could buy ground and build a new Mississippi 
cheaper. They are pegging Bulletin Tow-head now. 

236 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

It won't do any good. If the river has got a mort- 
gage on that island, it will foreclose, sure ; pegs or no 
pegs. Away down yonder, they have driven two 
rows of piles straight through the middle of a dry 
bar half a mile long, which is forty foot out of the 
water when the river is low. What do you reckon 
that is for? If I know, I wish I may land inHUMP 
yourself, you son of an undertaker! — out with that 
coal-oily now, lively, lively! And just look at what 
they are trying to do down there at Milliken's Bend. 
There's been a cut-off in that section, and Vicksburg 
is left out in the cold. It's a country town now. 
The river strikes in below it ; and a boat can't go up 
to the town except in high water. Well, they are 
going to build wing-dams in the bend opposite the 
foot of 103, and throw the water over and cut off 
the foot of the island and plow down into an old 
ditch where the river used to be in ancient times ; and 
they think they can persuade the water around that 
way, and get it to strike in above Vicksburg, as it 
used to do, and fetch the town back into the world 
again. That is, they are going to take this whole 
Mississippi, and twist it arotuid and make it run 
several miles up-stream. Well, you've got to ad- 
mire men that deal in ideas of that size and can tote 
them around without crutches; but you haven't got 
to believe they can do such miracles, have you? And 
yet you ain't absolutely obliged to believe they can't. 
I reckon the safe way, where a man can afford it, is 
to copper the operation, and at the same time buy 
enough property in Vicksbtu-g to square you up in 
case they win. Government is doing a deal for the 

237 



MARK TWAIN 

Mississippi, now — spending loads of money on her. 
When there used to be four thousand steamboats and 
ten thousand acres of coal-barges, and rafts, and 
trading-scows, there wasn't a lantern from St. Paul 
to New Orleans, and the snags were thicker than 
bristles on a hog's back ; and now, when there's three 
dozen steamboats and nary barge or raft, govern- 
ment has snatched out all the snags, and lit up the 
shores like Broadway, and a boat's as safe on the 
river as she'd be in heaven. And I reckon that by 
the time there ain't any boats left at all, the Commis- 
sion will have the old thing all reorganized, and 
dredged out, and fenced in, and tidied up, to a degree 
that will make navigation just simply perfect, and 
absolutely safe and profitable; and all the days will 
be Sundays, and all the mates will be Sunday-school 
suWHAT - in - the - nation - you - fooling - around - 
ihere-foTj you sons of unrighteousness y heirs of per- 
dition! Going to he a year getting that hogshead 
ashore?'* 

During our trip to New Orleans and back, we had 
many conversations with river-men, planters, jour- 
nalists, and officers of the River Commission — with 
conflicting and confusing results. To wit : 

1. Some believed in the Commission's scheme to 
arbitrarily and permanently confine (and thus 
deepen) the channel, preserve threatened shores, etc. 

2. Some believed that the Commission's money 
ought to be spent only on building and repairing the 
great system of levees. 

3. Some believed that the higher you build your 

238 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

levee, the higher the river's bottom will rise; and 
that consequently the levee system is a mistake. 

4. Some believed in the scheme to relieve the 
river, in flood-time, by tiiming its surplus waters 
off into Lake Borgne, etc. 

5. Some believed in the scheme of northern lake- 
reservoirs to replenish the Mississippi in low-water 
seasons. 

Whenever you find a man down there who be- 
lieves in one of these theories you may turn to the 
next man and frame your talk upon the hypothesis 
that he does not believe in that theory ; and after you 
have had experience, you do not take this course 
doubtfully or hesitatingly, but with the confidence 
of a dying murderer — converted one, I mean. For 
you will have come to know, with a deep and restful 
certainty, that you are not going to meet two people 
sick of the same theory, one right after the other. 
No, there will always be one or two with the other 
diseases along between. And as you proceed, you 
will find out one or two other things. You will find 
out that there is no distemper of the lot but is con- 
tagious ; and you cannot go where it is without catch- 
ing it. You may vaccinate yourself with deterrent 
facts as much as you please — ^it will do no good; it 
will seem to "take," but it doesn't; the moment you 
rub against any one of those theorists, make up your 
mind that it is time to hang out your yellow flag. 

Yes, you are his sure victim: yet his work is not 
all to your hurt — only part of it; for he is like your 
family physician, who comes and cures the mimips, 
and leaves the scarlet fever behind. If your man 

239 



MARK TWAIN 

is a Lake-Borgne-relief theorist, for instance, he will 
exhale a cloud of deadly facts and statistics which 
will lay you out with that disease, sure; but at the 
same time he will cure you of any other of the five 
theories that may have previously got into your 
system. 

I have had all the five; and had them ''bad"; but 
ask me not, in mournful numbers, which one racked 
me hardest, or which one numbered the biggest sick- 
list, for I do not know. In truth, no one can answer 
the latter question. Mississippi Improvement is a 
mighty topic, down yonder. Every man on the 
river-banks, south of Cairo, talks about it every day, 
during such moments as he is able to spare from 
talking about the war; and each of the several chief 
theories has its host of zealous partisans; but, as I 
have said, it is not possible to determine which cause 
numbers the most recruits. 

All were agreed upon one point, however: if Con- 
gress would make a sufficient appropriation, a colos- 
sal benefit would result. Very well; since then the 
appropriation has been made — possibly a sufficient 
one, certainly not too large a one. Let us hope that 
the prophecy will be amply fulfilled. 

One thing will be easily granted by the reader: 
that an opinion from Mr. Edward Atkinson, upon 
any vast national commercial matter, comes as near 
ranking as authority as can the opinion of any indi- 
vidual in the Union. What he has to say about 
Mississippi River Improvement will be found in the 
Appendix. 1 

* See Appendix B. 
240 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

Sometimes half a dozen figures will reveal, as with 
a lightning flash, the importance of a subject which 
ten thousand labored words, with the same pinpose 
in view, had left at last but dim and imcertain. Here 
is a case of the sort — ^paragraph from the Cincinnati 
Commercial: 

The towboat Jos. B. Williams is on her way to New Orleans 
with a tow of thirty-two barges, containing six hundred thousand 
bushels (seventy-six pounds to the bushel) of coal exclusive of her 
own fuel, being the largest tow ever taken to New Orleans or 
anywhere else in the world. Her freight bill, at three cents a 
bushel, amounts to $18,000. It would take eighteen hundred 
cars, of three hundred and thirty-three bushels to the car, to 
transport this amount of coal. At $10 per ton, or $100 per car, 
which would be a fair price for the distance by rail, the freight 
bill would amount to $180,000, or $162,000 more by rail than 
by river. The tow will be taken from Pittsburg to New Orleans 
in fourteen or fifteen days. It would take one hundred trains 
of eighteen cars to the train to transport this one tow of six 
himdred thousand bushels of coal, and even if it made the usual 
speed of fast' freight lines, it would take one whole summer to 
put it through by rail. 

When a river in good condition can enable one 
to save $162,000, and a whole summer's time, on a 
single cargo, the wisdom of taking measures to keep 
the river in good condition is made plain to even the 
uncommercial mind. 



CHAPTER XXIX 

A FEW SPECIMEN BRICKS 

WE passed through the Plum Point region, 
turned Craig-head's Point, and glided un- 
challenged by what was once the formidable Fort 
Pillow, memorable because of the massacre perpe- 
trated there during the war. Massacres are sprin- 
kled with some frequency through the histories of 
several Christian nations, but this is almost the only 
one that can be found in American history ; perhaps 
it is the only one which rises to a size correspondent 
to that huge and somber title. We have the "Bos- 
ton Massacre," where two or three people were 
killed; but we must bunch Anglo-Saxon history to- 
gether to find the fellow to the Fort Pillow tragedy ; 
and doubtless even then we must travel back to the 
days and the performances of Coeur de Lion, that 
fine "hero," before we accomplish it. 

More of the river's freaks. In times past the 
channel used to strike above Island 37, by Brandy- 
wine Bar, and down toward Island 39. Afterward 
changed its coiurse and went from Brandywine down 
through Vogelman's chute in the Devil's Elbow, to 
Island 39 — part of this course reversing the old 
order; the river running up four or five miles, instead 
of down, and cutting off, throughout, some fifteen 

242 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

miles of distance. This in 1876. All that region is 
now called Centennial Island. 

There is a tradition that Island 37 was one of the 
principal abiding - places of the once celebrated 
"Murel's Gang." This was a colossal combination 
of robbers, horse-thieves, negro-stealers, and counter- 
feiters, engaged in business along the river some fifty 
or sixty years ago. While our journey across the 
coimtry toward St. Louis was in progress we had had 
no end of Jesse James and his stirring history; for 
he had just been assassinated by an agent of the 
Governor of Missouri, and was in consequence oc- 
cupying a good deal of space in the newspapers. 
Cheap histories of him were for sale by train-boys. 
According to these, he was the most marvelous 
creature of his kind that had ever existed. It was a 
mistake. Murel was his equal in boldness, in pluck, in 
rapacity; in cruelty, brutality, heartlessness, treach- 
ery, and in general and comprehensive vileness and 
shamelessness ; and very much his superior in some 
larger aspects. James was a retail rascal; Murel, 
wholesale. James's modest genius dreamed of no 
loftier flight than the planning of raids upon cars, 
coaches, and country banks. Murel projected negro 
insurrections and the capture of New Orleans; and 
furthermore, on occasion, this Murel could go into 
a pulpit and edify the congregation. What are 
James and his half-dozen vulgar rascals compared 
with this stately old-time criminal, with his sermons, 
his meditated insurrections and city-captures, and 
his majestic following of ten hundred men, sworn to 
do his evil will! 

243 



MARK TWAIN 

Here is a paragraph or two concerning this big 
operator, from a now forgotten book which was 
pubHshed half a century ago: 

He appears to have been a most dexterous as well as consum- 
mate villain. When he traveled, his usual disguise was that of 
an itinerant preacher; and it is said that his discourses were 
very "soul-moving" — interesting the hearers so much that they 
forgot to look after their horses, which were carried away by 
his confederates while he was preaching. But the stealing of 
horses in one state, and selling them in another, was but a small 
portion of their business; the most lucrative was the enticing 
slaves to run away from their masters that they might sell them 
in another quarter. This was arranged as follows: they would 
tell a negro that if he would run away from his master, and 
allow them to sell him, he should receive a portion of the money 
paid for him, and that upon his return to them a second time 
they would send him to a free state, where he would be safe. 
The poor wretches complied with this request, hoping to obtain 
money and freedom ; they would be sold to another master, and 
run away again to their employers; sometimes they would be 
sold in this marmer three or four times, until they had realized 
three or four thousand dollars by them ; but as, after this, there 
was fear of detection, the usual custom was to get rid of the 
only witness that could be produced against them, which was the 
negro himself, by murdering him and throwing his body into 
the Mississippi. Even if it was established that they had 
stolen a negro, before he was murdered, they were always pre- 
pared to evade punishment; for they concealed the negro who 
had run away until he was advertised and a reward offered to 
any man who would catch him. An advertisement of this kind 
warrants the person to take the property, if found. And then 
the negro becomes a property in trust; when, therefore, they 
sold the negro, it only became a breach of trust, not stealing; and 
for a breach of trust the owner of the property can only have 
redress by a civil action, which was useless, as the damages 
were never paid. It may be inquired how it was that Murel 
escaped Lynch law under such circumstances. This will be 
easily understood when it is stated that he had more than a 
thousand sworn confederates, all ready at a mementos notice to 

244 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

support any of the gang who might be in trouble. The names 
of all the principal confederates of Murel were obtained from 
himself, in a manner which I shall presently explain. The gang 
was composed of two classes: The Heads or Council, as they 
were called, who planned and concerted, but seldom acted; 
they amounted to about four hundred. The other class were 
the active agents, and were termed strikers, and amounted to 
about six hundred and fifty. These were the tools in the hands of 
the others; they ran all the risk, and received but a small portion 
of the money; they were in the power of the leaders of the gang, 
who would sacrifice them at any time by handing them over to 
justice, or sinking their bodies in the Mississippi. The general 
rendezvous of this gang of miscreants was on the Arkansas side 
of the river, where they concealed their negroes in the morasses 
and cane-brakes. 

The depredations of this extensive combination were severely 
felt; but so well were their plans arranged that, although Murel, 
who was always active, was everywhere suspected, there was no 
proof to be obtained. It so happened, however, that a young 
man of the name of Stewart, who was looking after two slaves 
which Murel had decoyed away, fell in with him and obtained his 
confidence, took the oath, and was admitted into the gang as one 
of the General Council. By this means all was discovered; for 
Stewart turned traitor, although he had taken the oath, and 
having obtained every information, exposed the whole concern, 
the names of all the parties, and finally succeeded in bringing 
home sufficient evidence against Murel to procure his conviction 
and sentence to the penitentiary (Murel was sentenced to four- 
teen years' imprisonment). So many people who were supposed 
to be honest, and bore a respectable name in the different states, 
were found to be among the list of the Grand Council as pub- 
lished by Stewart, that every attempt was made to throw dis- 
credit upon his assertions — ^his character was villified, and more 
than one attempt was made to assassinate him. He was obliged 
to quit the Southern states in consequence. It is, however, 
now well ascertained to have been all true; and although some 
blame Mr. Stewart for having violated his oath, they no longer 
attempt to deny that his revelations were correct. I will quote 
one or two portions of Murel's confessions to Mr. Stewart, 
made to him when they were journeying together. I ought to 
have observed that the ultimate intentions of Murel and his 

245 



MARK TWAIN 

associates were, by his own account, on a very extended scale; 
having no less an object in view than raising the blacks against 
the whites, taking possession of and plundering New Orleans, and 
making themselves possessors of the territory. The following are a 
few extracts : 

"I collected all my friends about New Orleans at one of our 
friends' houses in that place, and we sat in council three days 
before we got all our plans to our notion; we then determined 
to undertake the rebellion at every hazard, and make as many 
friends as we could for that purpose. Every man's business 
being assigned him, I started to Natchez on foot, having sold 
my horse in New Orleans — with the intention of stealing another 
after I started. I walked four days, and no opportunity offered 
for me to get a horse. The fifth day, about twelve, I had become 
tired, and stopped at a creek to get some water and rest a Uttle. 
While I was sitting on a log, looking down the road the way 
that I had come, a man came in sight riding on a good-looking 
horse. The very moment I saw him, I was determined to have 
his horse, if he was in the garb of a traveler. He rode up, and 
I saw from his equipage that he was a traveler. I rose and 
drew an elegant rifle pistol on him and ordered him to dismount. 
He did so, and I took his horse by the bridle and pointed down 
the creek, and ordered him to walk before me. He went a few 
hundred yards and stopped. I hitched his horse, and then made 
him undress himself, all to his shirt and drawers, and ordered 
him to turn his back to me. He said: 'If you are determined 
to kill me, let me have time to pray before I die.' I told him 
I had no time to hear hirn pray. He turned around and dropped 
on his knees, and I shot him through the back of the head. I 
ripped open his belly, and took out his entrails and sunk him in 
the creek. I then searched his pockets, and found four hundred 
dollars and thirty-seven cents, and a number of papers that 
I did not take time to examine. I sunk the pocketbook and 
papers and his hat in the creek. His boots were brand new, and 
fitted me genteelly; and I put them on and sunk my old shoes 
in the creek, to atone for them. I rolled up his clothes and 
put them into his portmanteau, as they were brand-new cloth of 
the best quaUty. I mounted as fine a horse as ever I straddled, 
and directed my course for Natchez in much better style than 
I had been for the last five days. 

"Myself and a fellow by the name of Crenshaw gathered four 

246 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

good horses and started for Georgia. We got in company with 
a young South - Carolinian just before we got to Cumberland 
Mountain, and Crenshaw soon knew all about his business. 
He had been to Tennessee to buy a drove of hogs, but when he 
got there pork was dearer than he calculated, and he declined 
purchasing. We concluded he was a prize. Crenshaw winked 
at me; I understood his idea. Crenshaw had traveled the road 
before, but I never had; we had traveled several miles on the 
mountain, when we passed near a great precipice; just before 
we passed it Crenshaw asked me for my whip, which had a pound 
of lead in the butt; I handed it to him, and he rode up by the 
side of the South-Carolinian, and gave him a blow on the side 
of the head and tumbled him from his horse; we lit from our 
horses and fingered his pockets; we got twelve hundred and 
sixty-two dollars. Crenshaw said he knew a place to hide him, 
and he gathered him under his arms and I by his feet, and con- 
veyed him to a deep crevice in the brow of the precipice, and 
tumbled him into it, and he went out of sight; we then tumbled 
in his saddle, and took his horse with us, which was worth two 
hundred dollars. 

"We were detained a few days, and during that time our 
friend went to a little village in the neighborhood and saw the 
negro advertised (a negro in our possession), and a description 
of the two men of whom he had been purchased, and giving his 
suspicions of the men. It was rather squally times, but any 
port in a storm; we took the negro that night on the bank of 
a creek which runs by the farm of our friend, and Crenshaw shot 
him through the head. We took out his entrails and sunk him 
in the creek. 

"He had sold the other negro the third time on Arkansas 
River for upward of five hundred dollars; and then stole him 
and delivered him into the hand of his friend, who conducted 
him to a swamp, and veiled the tragic scene, and got the last 
gleanings and sacred pledge of secrecy; as a game of that kind 
will not do unless it ends in a mystery to all but the fraternity. 
He sold the negro, first and last, for nearly two thousand dollars, 
and then put him forever out of the reach of all pursuers; and 
they can never graze him unless they can find the negro; and 
that they cannot do, for his carcass has fed many a tortoise and 
catfish before this time, and the frogs have sung this many a 
long day to the silent repose of his skeleton." 

247 



MARK TWAIN 

We were approaching Memphis, in front of which 
city, and witnessed by its people, was fought the 
most famous of the river battles of the Civil War. 
Two men whom I had served under, in my river days, 
took part in that fight : Mr. Bixby, head pilot of the 
Union fleet, and Montgomery, Commodore of the 
Confederate fleet. Both saw a great deal of active 
service during the war, and achieved high reputations 
for pluck and capacity. 

As we neared Memphis, we began to cast about 
for an excuse to stay with the Gold Dust to the end 
of her course — Vicksburg. We were so pleasantly 
situated that we did not wish to make a change. 
I had an errand of considerable importance to do 
at Napoleon, Arkansas, but perhaps I could man- 
age it without quitting the Gold Dust. I said as 
much; so we decided to stick to present quar- 
ters. 

The boat was to tarry at Memphis till ten the 
next morning. It is a beautiful city, nobly situated 
on a commanding bluff overlooking the river. The 
streets are straight and spacious, though not paved 
in a way to incite distempered admiration. No, the 
admiration must be reserved for the town's sewerage 
system, which is called perfect ; a recent reform, how- 
ever, for it was just the other way up to a few years 
ago — 2l reform resulting from the lesson taught by 
a desolating visitation of the yellow fever. In those 
awful days the people were swept off by hundreds, 
by thousands ; and so great was the reduction caused 
by flight and by death together, that the population 
was diminished three-fourths, and so remained for 

248 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

a time. Business stood nearly still, and the streets 
bore an empty Stinday aspect. 

Here is a picture of Memphis, at that disastrous 
time, drawn by a German tourist who seems to have 
been an eye-witness of the scenes which he described. 
It is from chapter vii of his book, just published in 
Leipzig, Mississippi-Fahrten, von Ernst von Hesse- 
Wartegg : 

In August the yellow fever had reached its extremest height. 
Daily hundreds fell a sacrifice to the terrible epidemic. The city 
was become a mighty graveyard, two-thirds of the population 
had deserted the place, and only the poor, the aged, and the sick 
remained behind, a sure prey for the insidious enemy. The 
houses were closed; little lamps burned in front of many — a sign 
that here death had entered. Often several lay dead in a single 
house ; from the windows htmg black crape. The stores were shut 
up, for their owners were gone away or dead. 

Fearful evil! In the briefest space it struck down and swept 
away even the most vigorous victim. A slight indisposition, 
then an hour of fever, then the hideous delirium, then — ^the 
Yellow Death! On the street-corners, and in the squares, lay 
sick men, suddenly overtaken by the disease; and even corpses, 
distorted and rigid. Food failed. Meat spoiled in a few hours 
in the fetid and pestiferous air, and turned black. 

Fearful clamors issue from many houses! Then after a season 
they cease, and all is still; noble, self-sacrificing men come with 
the coffin, nail it up, and carry it away to the graveyard. In the 
night stillness reigns. Only the physicians and the hearses 
hurry through the streets; and out of the distance, at intervals, 
comes the mufiled thunder of the railway-train, which with the 
speed of the wind, as if hunted by furies, flies by the pest-ridden 
city without halting. 

But there is life enough there now. The popula- 
tion exceeds forty thousand and is augmenting, and 
trade is in a flourishing condition: We drove about 
the city; visited the park and the sociable horde of 

249 



MARK TWAIN 

squirrels there ; saw the fine residences, rose-clad ana 
in other ways enticing to the eye; and got a good 
breakfast at the hotel. 

A thriving place is the Good Samaritan City of the 
Mississippi: has a great wholesale jobbing trade; 
foundries, machine shops, and manufactories of 
wagons, carriages, and cotton-seed oil; and is shortly 
to have cotton-mills and elevators. 

Her cotton receipts reached five hundred thousand 
bales last year — an increase of sixty thousand over 
the year before. Out from her healthy commercial 
heart issue five trunk-lines of railway; and a sixth 
is being added. 

This is a very different Memphis from the one 
which the vanished and unremembered procession of 
foreign tourists used to put into their books long 
time ago. In the days of the now forgotten but 
once renowned and vigorously hated Mrs. TroUope, 
Memphis seems to have consisted mainly of one long 
street of log houses, with some outlying cabins 
sprinkled around rearward toward the woods; and 
now and then a pig, and no end of mud. That was 
fifty-five years ago. She stopped at the hotel. 
Plainly it was not the one which gave us our break- 
fast. She says : 

The table was laid for fifty persons, and was nearly full. 
They ate in perfect silence, and with such astonishing rapidity 
that their dinner was over literally before ours was begun; the 
only sounds heard were those produced by the knives and forks, 
with the unceasing chorus of coughing, etc. 

"Coughing, etc.'' The "etc." stands for an im- 
pleasant word there, a word which she does not 

250 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

always charitably cover up, but sometimes prints. 
You will find it in the following description of a 
steamboat dinner which she ate in company with a 
lot of aristocratic planters ; wealthy, well-bom, igno- 
rant swells they were, tinseled with the usual harm- 
less military and judicial titles of that old day of 
cheap shams and windy pretense : 

The total want of all the usual courtesies of the table; the 
voracious rapidity with which the viands were seized and de- 
voured; the strange uncouth phrases and pronunciation; the 
loathsome spitting, from the contamination of which it was 
absolutely impossible to protect our dresses ; the frightful manner 
of feeding with their knives, till the whole blade seemed to enter 
into the mouth; and the still more frightful manner of cleaning 
the teeth afterward with a pocket-knife, soon forced us to feel 
that we were not surrounded by the generals, colonels, and 
majors of the Old World, and that the dinner-hour was to be 
anything rather than an hour of enjoyment. 



CHAPTER XXX 

SKETCHES BY THE WAY 

IT was a big river, below Memphis; banks brim- 
ming full, everywhere, and very frequently more 
than full, the waters pouring out over the land, flood- 
ing the woods and fields for miles into the interior; 
and in places to a depth of fifteen feet; signs all 
about of men's hard work gone to ruin, and all to 
be done over again, with straitened means and a 
weakened courage. A melancholy picture, and a 
continuous one; hundreds of miles of it. Sometimes 
the beacon lights stood in water three feet deep, in 
the edge of dense forests which extended for miles 
without farm, wood-yard, clearing, or break of any 
kind; which meant that the keeper of the light must 
come in a skiff a great distance to discharge his trust 
— and often in desperate weather. Yet I was told 
that the work is faithfully performed, in all weathers; 
and not always by men — sometimes by women, if 
the man is sick or absent. The government fur- 
nishes oil, and pays ten or fifteen dollars a month for 
the lighting and tending. A government boat dis- 
tributes oil and pays wages once a month. 

The Ship Island region was as woodsy and tenant- 
less as ever. The island has ceased to be an island; 
has joined itself compactly to the main shore, and 

253 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

wagons travel now where the steamboats used to 
navigate. No signs left of the wreck of the Penn- 
sylvania. Some farmer will turn up her bones with 
his plow one day, no doubt, and be surprised. 

We were getting down now into the migrating 
negro region. These poor people could never travel 
when they were slaves; so they make up for the 
privation now. They stay on a plantation till the 
desire to travel seizes them; then they pack up, hail 
a steamboat, and clear out. Not for any particular 
place; no, nearly any place will answer; they only 
want to be moving. The amount of money on hand 
will answer the rest of the conundrum for them. If 
it will take them fifty miles, very well; let it be fifty. 
If not, a shorter flight will do. 

During a couple of days we frequently answerecf 
these hails. Sometimes there was a group of high- 
water -stained, tumbledown cabins, populous with 
colored folk, and no whites visible; with grassless 
patches of dry groimd here and there; a few felled 
trees, with skeleton cattle, mules, and horses, eating 
the leaves and gnawing the bark — no other food for 
them in the flood- wasted land. Sometimes there was 
a single lonely landing-cabin; near it the colored 
family that had hailed us; little and big, old and 
young, roosting on the scant pile of household goods; 
these consisting of a rusty gun, some bedticks, 
chests, tinware, stools, a crippled looking-glass, a 
venerable arm-chair, and six or eight base-bom and 
spiritless yellow curs, attached to the family by 
strings. They must have their dogs; can't go with- 
out their dogs. Yet the dogs are never willing; they 

253 



MARK TWAIN 

always object; so, one after another, in ridiculous 
procession, they are dragged aboard; all four feet 
braced and sliding along the stage, head likely to be 
pulled off; but the tugger marching determinedly 
forward, bending to his work, with the rope over his 
shoulder for better purchase. Sometimes a child 
is forgotten and left on the bank; but never a 
dog. 

The usual river gossip going on in the pilot-house. 
Island No. 63 — an island with a lovely "chute," or 
passage, behind it in the former times. They said 
Jesse Jamieson, in the Skylark, had a visiting pilot 
with him one trip — a poor old broken-down, super- 
annuated fellow — left him at the wheel, at the foot 
of 63, to run off the watch. The ancient mariner 
went up through the chute, and down the river 
outside; and up the chute and down the river again; 
and yet again and again; and handed the boat over 
to the relieving pilot, at the end of three hours of 
honest endeavor, at the same old foot of the island 
where he had originally taken the wheel! A darky 
on shore who had observed the boat go by, about 
thirteen times, said, *"clar to gracious, I wouldn't be 
s'prised if day's a whole line o' dem Skylarks!' ' 

Anecdote illustrative of influence of reputation in 
the changing of opinion. The Eclipse was renowned 
for her swiftness. One day she passed along; an 
old darky on shore, absorbed in his own matters, 
did not notice what steamer it was. Presently 
some one asked : 

**Any boat gone up?" 

'*Yes, sah." 

254 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

**Was she going fast?" 

**0h, so-so — loafin' along." 

*'Now, do you know what boat that was?** 

"No, sah." 

"Why, uncle, that was the Eclipse.'' 

"No! Is dat so? Well, I bet it was — cause she 
jes' went by here a.-sparklin\f'' 

Piece of history illustrative of the violent style of 
some of the people down along here. During the 
early weeks of high water, A's fence-rails washed 
down on B's ground, and B's rails washed up in the 
eddy and landed on A's ground. A said, "Let the 
thing remain so; I will use your rails, and you use 
mine." But B objected — wouldn't have it so. One 
day, A came down on B's grounds to get his rails. 
B said, "I'll kill you!" and proceeded for him with 
his revolver. A said, "I'm not armed." So B, who 
wished to do only what was right, threw down his 
revolver; then pulled a knife, and cut A's throat 
all aroimd, but gave his principal attention to the 
front, and so failed to sever the jugular. Struggling 
around, A managed to get his hands on the discarded 
revolver, and shot B dead with it — and recovered 
from his own injuries. 

Further gossip ; after which, everybody went below 
to get afternoon coffee, and left me at the wheel, 
alone. Something presently reminded me of our 
last hour in St. Louis, part of which I spent on this 
boat's hurricane-deck, aft. I was joined there by a 
stranger, who dropped into conversation with me — 
a brisk young fellow, who said he was bom in a town 
in the interior of Wisconsin, and had never seen a 

255 



MARK TWAIN 

steamboat until a week before. Also said that on 
the way down from La Crosse he had inspected and 
examined his boat so diligently and with such pas- 
sionate interest that he had mastered the whole 
thing from stem to rudder-blade. Asked me where 
I was from. I answered, ''New England." "Oh, a 
Yank!" said he; and went chatting straight along, 
without waiting for assent or denial. He immedi- 
ately proposed to take me all over the boat and tell 
me the names of her different parts, and teach me 
their uses. Before I could enter protest or excuse, 
he was already rattling glibly away at his benevolent 
work; and when I perceived that he was misnaming 
the things, and inhospitably amusing himself at the 
expense of an innocent stranger from a far coimtry, 
I held my peace and let him have his way. He gave 
me a world of misinformation; and the further he 
went, the wider his imagination expanded, and the 
more he enjoyed his cruel work of deceit. Some- 
times, after palming off a particularly fantastic and 
outrageous lie upon me, he was so ''full of laugh" 
that he had to step aside for a minute, upon one 
pretext or another, to keep me from suspecting. I 
stayed faithfully by him until his comedy was fin- 
ished. Then he remarked that he had undertaken 
to "learn" me all about a steamboat, and had done 
it; but that if he had overlooked anything, just ask 
him and he would supply the lack. "Anything 
about this boat that you don't know the name of or 
the purpose of, you come to me and I'll tell you." 
I said I would, and took my departure, disappeared, 
and approached him from another quarter, whence 

256 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

he could not see me. There he sat, all alone, dou- 
bling himself up and writhing this way and that, in 
the throes of imappeasable laughter. He must have 
made himself sick; for he was not publicly visible 
afterward for several days. Meantime, the episode 
dropped out of my mind. 

The thing that reminded me of it now, when I was 
alone at the wheel, was the spectacle of this yotmg 
fellow standing in the pilot-house door, with the 
knob in his hand, silently and severely inspecting 
me. I don't know when I have seen anybody look 
so injured as he did. He did not say anything — 
simply stood there and looked; reproachfully looked 
and pondered. Finally he shut the door and started 
away: halted on the texas a minute; came slowly 
back and stood in the door again, with that grieved 
look on his face; gazed upon me awhile in meek 
rebuke, then said: 

"You let me leam you all about a steaniboat, 
didn't yonV* 

/'Yes," I confessed. 

**Yes, you did — didn't you?" 

**Yes." 

*'You are the feller that — that — " 

Language failed. Pause — impotent struggle for 
further words — then he gave it up, choked out a 
deep, strong oath, and departed for good. After- 
ward I saw him several times below during the trip; 
but he was cold — ^would not look at me. Idiot ! if he 
had not been in such a sweat to play his witless, 
practical joke upon me, in the beginning, I would 
have persuaded his thoughts into some other direc- 

257 



MARK TWAIN 

tion, and saved him from committing that wanton 
and silly impoliteness. 

I had myself called with the four-o'clock watch, 
mornings, for one cannot see too many summer 
sunrises on the Mississippi. They are enchanting. 
First, there is the eloquence of silence; for a deep 
hush broods everywhere. Next, there is the haunt- 
ing sense of loneliness, isolation, remoteness from the 
worry and bustle of the world. The dawn creeps in 
stealthily; the solid walls of black forest soften to 
gray, and vast stretches of the river open up and 
reveal themselves; the water is glass-smooth, gives 
off spectral little wreaths of white mist, there is not 
the faintest breath of wind, nor stir of leaf; the tran- 
quillity is profound and infinitely satisfying. Then 
a bird pipes up, another follows, and soon the pipings 
develop into a jubilant riot of music. You see none 
of the birds ; you simply move through an atmosphere 
of song which seems to sing itself. When the light 
has become a little stronger, you have one of the 
fairest and softest pictures imaginable. You have 
the intense green of the massed and crowded foliage 
near by; you see it paling shade by shade in front 
of you; upon the next projecting cape, a mile off or 
more, the tint has lightened to the tender yoimg 
green of spring; the cape beyond that one has almost 
lost color, and the furthest one, miles away under 
the horizon, sleeps upon the water a mere dim vapor, 
and hardly separable from the sky above it and about 
it. And all this stretch of river is a mirror, and you 
have the shadowy reflections of the leafage and the 
curving shores and the receding capes pictured in it. 

258 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

Well, that is all beautiful ; soft and rich and beautiful ; 
and when the sun gets well up, and distributes a pink 
flush here and a powder of gold yonder and a piu-ple 
haze where it will yield the best effect, you grant that 
you have seen something that is worth remembering. 

We had the Kentucky Bend country in the early 
morning — scene of a strange and tragic accident in 
the old times. Captain Foe had a small stem-wheel 
boat, for years the home of himself and his wife. 
One night the boat struck a snag in the head of 
Kentucky Bend, and sank with astonishing sudden- 
ness; water already well above the cabin floor when 
the captain got aft. So he cut into his wife's state- 
room from above with an ax; she was asleep in the 
upper berth, the roof a flimsier one than was sup- 
posed ; the first blow crashed down through the rotten 
boards and clove her skull. 

This bend is all filled up now — result of a cut-off; 
and the same agent has taken the great and once 
much-frequented Walnut Bend, and set it away back 
in a solitude far from the accustomed track of passing 
steamers. 

Helena we visited, and also a town I had not 
heard of before, it being of recent birth — ^Arkansas 
City. It was bom of a railway; the Little Rock, 
Mississippi River and Texas Railroad touches the 
river there. We asked a passenger who belonged 
there what sort of a place it was. "Well," said he, 
after considering, and with the air of one who wishes 

to take time and be accurate, "it's a h ^1 of a 

place." A description which was photographic for 
exactness. There were several rows and clusters of 

259 



MARK TWAIN 

shabby frame houses, and a supply of mud sufficient 
to insiu*e the town against a famine in that article for 
a himdred years; for the overflow had but lately 
subsided. There were stagnant ponds in the streets, 
here and there, and a dozen rude scows were scat- 
tered about, lying aground wherever they happened 
to have been when the waters drained off and people 
could do their visiting and shopping on foot once 
more. Still, it is a thriving place, with a rich coun- 
try behind it, an elevator in front of it, and also a 
fine big mill for the manufacture of cotton-seed oil. 
I had never seen this kind of a mill before. 

Cotton-seed was comparatively valueless in my 
time ; but it is worth twelve or thirteen dollars a ton 
now, and none of it is thrown away. The oil made 
from it is colorless, tasteless, and almost, if not 
entirely, odorless. It is claimed that it can, by 
proper manipulation, be made to resemble and per- 
form the office of any and all oils, and be produced 
at a cheaper rate than the cheapest of the originals. 
Sagacious people shipped it to Italy, doctored it, 
labeled it, and brought it back as olive-oil. This 
trade grew to be so formidable that Italy was obliged 
to put a prohibitory impost upon it to keep it from 
working serious injiuy to her oil industry. 

Helena occupies one of the prettiest situations on 
the Mississippi. Her perch is the last, the southern- 
most group of hills which one sees on that side of the 
river. In its normal condition it is a pretty town; 
but the flood (or possibly the seepage) had lately 
been ravaging it; whole streets of houses had been 
invaded by the muddy water, and the outsides of 

260 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

the biiildings were still belted with a broad stain 
extending upward from the foundations. Stranded 
and discarded scows lay all about; plank sidewalks 
on stilts four feet high were still standing; the broad 
sidewalks on the ground level were loose and ruinous 
— a couple of men trotting along them could make 
a blind man think a cavalry charge was coming; 
everywhere the mud was black and deep, and in 
many places malarious pools of stagnant water were 
standing. A Mississippi inundation is the next 
most wasting and desolating infliction to a fire. 

We had an enjoyable time here, on this sunny Sun- 
day ; two full hours' liberty ashore while the boat dis- 
charged freight. In the back streets but few white 
people were visible, but there were plenty of colored 
folk — ^mainly women and girls; and almost without 
exception upholstered in bright new clothes of swell 
and elaborate style and cut — a glaring and hilarious 
contrast to the mournful mud and the pensive puddles. 

Helena is the second town in Arkansas, in point 
of population — which is placed at five thousand. 
The country about it is exceptionally productive. 
Helena has a good cotton trade; handles from forty 
to sixty thousand bales annually; she has a large 
lumber and grain commerce; has a foundry, oil- 
mills, machine shops, and wagon factories — in brief, 
has one million dollars invested in manufacturing 
industries. She has two railways, and is the com- 
mercial center of a broad and prosperous region. 
Her gross receipts of money, annually, from all 
sources, are placed by the New Orleans Times- 
Democrat at four million dollars. 

261 



CHAPTER XXXI 

A THUMB-PRINT AND WHAT CAME OF IT 

WE were approaching Napoleon, Arkansas. So 
I began to think about my errand there. 
Time, noonday; and bright and simny. This was 
bad — not best, anyway; for mine was not (prefer- 
ably) a noonday kind of errand. The more I 
thought, the more that fact pushed itself upon me 
— now in one form, now in another. Finally, it took 
the form of a distinct question : Is it good common 
sense to do the errand in daytime, when by a Httle 
sacrifice of comfort and inclination you can have 
night for it, and no inquisitive eyes around? This 
settled it. Plain question and plain answer make 
the shortest road out of most perplexities. 

I got my friends into my stateroom, and said I 
was sorry to create annoyance and disappointment, 
but that upon reflection it really seemed best that 
we put our luggage ashore and stop over at Napoleon. 
Their disapproval was prompt and loud; their lan- 
guage mutinous. Their main argument was one 
which has always been the first to come to the sur- 
face, in such cases, since the beginning of time: 
"But you decided and agreed to stick to this boat," 
etc. ; as if, having determined to do an unwise thing, 
one is thereby bound to go ahead and make two 

262 



LIFE ON THE I^IISSISSIPPI 

unwise things of it, by carrying out that determina- 
tion. I tried various mollifying tactics upon them, 
with reasonably good success: under which encour- 
agement I increased my efforts; and, to show them 
that I had not created this annoying errand, and was 
in no way to blame for it, I presently drifted into its 
history — substantially as follows: 

Toward the end of last year I spent a few months 
in Munich, Bavaria. In November I was living in 
Fraulein Dahlweiner's pension, la, Karlstrasse; but 
my working quarters were a mile from there, in the 
house of a widow who supported herself by taking 
lodgers. She and her two young children used to 
drop in every morning and talk German to me — by 
request. One day, during a ramble about the city, 
I visited one of the two establishments where the 
government keeps and watches corpses until the 
doctors decide that they are permanently dead, and 
not in a trance state. It was a grisly place, that 
spacious room. There were thirty-six corpses of 
adults in sight, stretched on their backs on slightly 
slanted boards, in three long rows — all of them with 
wax- white, rigid faces, and all of them wrapped in 
white shrouds. Along the sides of the room were 
deep alcoves, like bay-windows ; and in each of these 
lay several marble- visaged babes, utterly hidden and 
buried under banks of fresh flowers, all but their 
faces and crossed hands. Around a finger of each 
of these fifty still forms, both great and small, was 
a ring; and from the ring a wire led to the ceiling, 
and thence to a bell in a watch-room yonder, where, 
day and night, a watchman sits always alert and 

263 



MARK TWAIN 

ready to spring to the aid of any of that pallid com- 
pany who, waking out of death, shall make a move- 
ment — ^for any, even the slightest, movement will 
twitch the wire and ring that fearful bell. I im- 
agined myself a death-sentinel drowsing there alone, 
far in the dragging watches of some wailing, gusty 
night, and having in a twinkling all my body stricken 
to quivering jelly by the sudden clamor of that awful 
summons! So I inquired about this thing; asked 
what resulted usually? if the watchman died, and 
the restored corpse came and did what it could to 
make his last moments easy? But I was rebuked 
for trying to feed an idle and frivolous curiosity in 
so solemn and so mournful a place; and went my 
way with a humbled crest. 

Next morning I was telling the widow my adven- 
ture when she exclaimed: 

'*Come with me! I have a lodger who shall tell 
you all you want to know. He has been a night 
watchman there." 

He was a living man, but he did not look it. He 
was abed and had his head propped high on pillows; 
his face was wasted and colorless, his deep-sunken 
eyes were shut; his hand, lying on his breast, was 
talonlike, it was so bony and long-fingered. The 
widow began her introduction of me. The man's 
eyes opened slowly, and glittered wickedly out from 
the twilight of their caverns; he frowned a black 
frown; he lifted his lean hand and waved us per- 
emptorily away. But the widow kept straight on, 
till she had got out the fact that I was a stranger and 
an American. The man's face changed at once, 

264. 




THE MAN S EYES OPENED SLOWLY 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

brightened, became even eager — and the next mo- 
ment he and I were alone together. 

I opened up in cast-iron German ; he responded in 
quite flexible EngHsh ; thereafter we gave the German 
language a permanent rest. 

This consumptive and I became good friends. I 
visited him every day, and we talked about every- 
thing. At least, about everything but wives and 
children. Let anybody's wife or anybody's child be 
mentioned and three things always followed: the 
most gracious and loving and tender light glimmered 
in the man's eyes for a moment; faded out the next, 
and in its place came that deadly look which had 
flamed there the first time I ever sav/ his lids un- 
close; thirdly, he ceased from speech there and then 
for that day, lay silent, abstracted, and absorbed, 
apparently heard nothing that I said, took no notice 
of my good-bys, and plainly did not know by either 
sight or hearing when I left the room. 

When I had been this Karl Ritter's daily and 
sole intimate during two months, he one day said 
abruptly : 

*T will tell you my story." 

A DYING man's CONFESSION 

Then he went on as follows : 

*T have never given up until now. But now I 
have given up. I am going to die. I made up my 
mind last night that it must be, and very soon, too. 
You say you are going to revisit yotu river by and 
by, when you find opportunity. Very well; that, 
together with a certain strange experience which fell 

265 



MARK TWAIN 

to my lot last night, determines me to tell you my 
history — for you will see Napoleon, Arkansas, and 
for my sake you will stop there and do a certain 
thing for me — a thing which you will willingly under- 
take after you shall have heard my narrative. 

"Let us shorten the story wherever we can, for 
it will need it, being long. You already know how 
I came to go to America, and how I came to settle 
in that lonely region in the South. But you do not 
know that I had a wife. My wife was young, beau- 
tiful, loving, and oh, so divinely good and blameless 
and gentle! And our little girl was her mother in 
miniature. It was the happiest of happy house- 
holds. 

' ' One night — it was toward the close of the war — 
I woke up out of a sodden lethargy, and fotmd myself 
bound and gagged, and the air tainted with chloro- 
form! I saw two men in the room, and one was 
saying to the other in a hoarse whisper: 'I told her 
I would, if she made a noise, and as for the child — * 

*'The other man interrupted in a low, half -crying 
voice : 

*"You said we'd only gag them and rob them, 
not hurt them, or I wouldn't have come.' 

*"Shut up your whining; had to change the plan 
when they waked up. You done all you could to 
protect them, now let that satisfy you. Come, help 
rummage.' 

"Both men were masked and wore coarse, ragged 
* nigger' clothes; they had a bull's-eye lantern, and 
by its light I noticed that the gentler robber had no 
thumb on his right hand. They rummaged around 

266 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

my poor cabin for a moment: the head bandit then 
said in his stage whisper : 

** 'It's a waste of time — he shall tell where it*s hid. 
Undo his gag and revive him up.' 

"The other said: 

"'All right — provided no clubbing.* 

*"No clubbing it is, then — provided he keeps still.' 

"They approached me. Just then there was a 
sound outside, a sound of voices and trampling hoofs ; 
the robbers held their breath and listened ; the soimds 
came slowly nearer and nearer, then came a shout: 

* ' 'Hello, the house ! Show a light, we want water. ' 

"'The captain's voice, by G !' said the stage- 
whispering niffian, and both robbers fled by the 
way of the back door, shutting off their bull's-eye 
as they ran. 

"The stranger shouted several times more, then 
rode by — there seemed to be a dozen of the horses — 
and I heard nothing more. 

"I struggled, but could not free myself from my 
bonds. I tried to speak, but the gag was effective, 
I could not make a sound. I listened for my wdfe's 
voice and my child's — listened long and intently, but 
no soimd came from the other end of the room where 
their bed was. This silence became more and more 
awful, more and more ominous, every momient. 
Could you have endured an hour of it, do you think? 
Pity me, then, who had to endure three. Three 
hours ? it was three ages ! Whenever the clock struck 
it seemed as if years had gone by since I had heard 
it last. All this time I was struggling in my bonds, 
and at last, about dawn, I got myself free and rose 

267 



MARK TWAIN 

up and stretched my stiff limbs. I was able to dis- 
tingiiish details pretty well. The floor was littered 
with things thrown there by the robbers during their 
search for my savings. The first object that caught 
my particular attention was a docinnent of mine 
which I had seen the rougher of the two ruffians 
glance at and then cast away. It had blood on it! 
I staggered to the other end of the room. Oh, poor 
unoffending, helpless ones, there they lay; their 
troubles ended, mine begun ! 

' ' Did I appeal to the law — I ? Does it quench the 
pauper's thirst if the king drink for him? Oh, no, 
no, no ! I wanted no impertinent interference of the 
law. Laws and the gallows could not pay the debt 
that was owing to me ! Let the laws leave the mat- 
ter in my hands, and have no fears : I would find the 
debtor and collect the debt. How accomplish this, 
do you say? How accomplish it and feel so sure 
about it, when I had neither seen the robbers' faces, 
nor heard their natiu*al voices, nor had any idea who 
they might be? Nevertheless, I was sure — quite 
siure, quite confident. I had a clue — a clue which 
you would not have valued — a clue which would not 
have greatly helped even a detective, since he would 
lack the secret of how to apply it. I shall come to 
that presently — ^you shall see. Let us go on now, 
taking things in their due order. There was one 
circumstance which gave me a slant in a definite 
direction to begin with: Those two robbers were 
manifestly soldiers in tramp disguise, and not new 
to military service, but old in it — ^regulars, perhaps; 
they did not acquire their soldierly attitude, gestiu*es, 

268 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

carriage, in a day, nor a month, nor yet in a year. 
So I thought, but said nothing. And one of them 

had said, 'The captain's voice, by G !' — the one 

whose life I would have. Two miles away several 
regiments were in camp, and two companies of U. S. 
cavalry. When I learned that Captain Blakely of 
Company C had passed our way that night with an 
escort I said nothing, but in that company I resolved 
to seek my man. In conversation I studiously and 
persistently described the robbers as tramps, camp 
followers; and among this class the people made 
useless search, none suspecting the soldiers but me. 

''Working patiently by night in my desolated 
home, I made a disguise for myself out of various 
odds and ends of clothing; in the nearest village I 
bought a pair of blue goggles. By and by, when the 
military camp broke up, and Company C was ordered 
a hundred miles north, to Napoleon, I secreted my 
small hoard of money in my belt and took my de- 
parture in the night. When Company C arrived in 
Napoleon I was already there. Yes, I was there, 
with a new trade — fortime-teller. Not to seem 
partial, I made friends and told fortunes among all 
the companies garrisoned there, but I gave Company 
C the great bulk of my attentions. I made myself 
limitlessly obHging to these particular men; they 
could ask me no favor, put on me no risk which I 
would decline. I became the willing butt of their 
jokes; this perfected my popularity; I became a 
favorite. 

"I early foimd a private who lacked a thtmib — 
what joy it was to me! And when I found that he 

269 



MARK TWAIN 

alone, of all the company, had lost a thumb, my last 
misgiving vanished; I was sure I was on the right 
track. This man's name was Kniger, a German. 
There were nine Germans in the company. I 
watched to see who might be his intimates, but he 
seemed to have no especial intimates. But I was 
his intimate, and I took care to make the intimacy 
grow. Sometimes I so hungered for my revenge that 
I cotdd hardly restrain myself from going on my 
knees and begging him to point out the man who 
had murdered my wife and child, but I managed to 
bridle my tongue. I bided my time and went on 
telling fortimes, as opportunity offered. 

* * My apparatus was simple : a little red paint and 
a bit of white paper. I painted the ball of the 
client's thumb, took a print of it on the paper, 
studied it that night, and revealed his forttme to him 
next day. What was my idea in this nonsense? It 
was this : When I was a youth, I knew an old French- 
man who had been a prison-keeper for thirty years, 
and he told me that there was one thing about a 
person which never changed, from the cradle to the 
grave — the lines in the ball of the thumb; and he 
said that these lines were never exactly alike in the 
thumbs of any two human beings. In these days, 
we photograph the new criminal, and hang his pic- 
ture in the Rogues* Gallery for futtire reference; but 
that Frenchman, in his day, used to take a print of 
the ball of a new prisoner's thumb and put that away 
for future reference. He always said that pictures 
were no good — ^future disguises could make them 
useless. 'The thumb's the only sure thing,' said he; 

270 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

*you can't disguise that/ And he used to prove his 
theory, too, on my friends and acquaintances; it 
always succeeded. 

"I went on telling fortunes. Every night I shut 
myself in, all alone, and studied the day's thumb- 
prints with a magnifying-glass. Imagine the de- 
vouring eagerness with which I poured over those 
mazy red spirals, with that document by my side 
which bore the right-hand thumb and finger-marks 
of that imknown murderer, printed with the dearest 
blood — to me — that was ever shed on this earth! 
And many and many a time I had to repeat the 
same old disappointed remark, 'Will they never cor- 
respond ! ' 

"But my reward came at last. It was the print 
of the thumb of the forty -third man of Company C 
whom I had experimented on — Private Franz Adler. 
An hour before I did not know the murderer's name, 
or voice, or figure, or face, or nationality; but now 
I knew all these things! I believed I might feel 
sure; the Frenchman's repeated demonstrations be- 
ing so good a warranty. Still, there was a way to 
make sure. I had an impression of Kruger's left 
thumb. In the morning I took him aside when he 
was off duty; and when we were out of sight and 
hearing of witnesses, I said impressively: 

" ' A part of your fortune is so grave that I thought 
it would be better for you if I did not tell it in 
public. You and another man, whose forttme I was 
studying last night — Private Adler — ^have been mur- 
dering a woman and a child ! You are being dogged. 
Within five days both of you will be assassinated.* 

271 



MARK TWAIN 

**He dropped on his knees, frightened out of his 
wits; and for five minutes he kept pouring cut the 
same set of words, Hke a demented person, and in 
the same half-crying way which was one of my 
memories of that murderous night in my cabin: 

" ' I didn't do it ; upon my soul I didn't do it ; and 
I tried to keep him from doing it. I did, as God i^ 
my witness. He did it alone.' 

"This was all I wanted. And I tried to get rid 
of the fool; but no, he clung to me, imploring me to 
save him from the assassin. He said: 

*' 'I have money — ten thousand dollars — ^hid away, 
the fruit of loot and thievery ; save me — tell me what 
to do, and you shall have it, every penny. Two- 
thirds of it is my cousin Adler's; but you can take 
it all. We hid it when we first came here. But I 
hid it in a new place yesterday, and have not told 
him — shall not tell him. I was going to desert, and 
get away with it all. It is gold, and too heavy to 
carry when one is running and dodging ; but a woman 
who has been gone over the river two days to pre- 
pare my way for me is going to follow me with it; 
and if I got no chance to describe the hiding-place 
to her I was going to slip my silver watch into her 
hand, or send it to her, and she would understand. 
There's a piece of paper in the back of the case 
which tells it all. Here, take the watch — tell me 
what to do !' 

**He was trying to press his watch upon me, and 
was exposing the paper and explaining it to me, 
when Adler appeared on the scene, about a dozen 
yards away. I said to poor Kruger: 

272 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

***Put up your watch, I don't want it. You 
sha*n't come to any harm. Go, now. I must tell 
Adler his fortune. Presently I will tell you how to 
escape the assassin; meantime I shall have to examine 
your thumb-mark again. Say nothing to Adler 
about this thing — say nothing to anybody.' 

"He went away filled with fright and gratitude, 
poor devil! I told Adler a long fortune — ^ptuposely 
so long that I could not finish it; promised to come 
to him on guard, that night, and tell him the really 
important part of it — the tragical part of it, I said 
— so must be out of reach of eavesdroppers. They 
always kept a picket-watch outside the town — mere 
discipline and ceremony — no occasion for it, no 
enemy around. 

- "Toward midnight I set out, equipped with the 
coimtersign, and picked my way toward the lonely 
region where Adler was to keep his watch. It was 
so dark that I stumbled right on a dim figure almost 
before I could get out a protecting word. The senti- 
nel hailed and I answered, both at the same moment. 
I added, 'It's only me — the fortime-teller.' Then I 
sHpped to the poor devil's side, and without a word 
I drove my dirk into his heart! ' Ja wohl,' laughed 
I, 'it was the tragedy part of his fortune, indeed!' 
As he fell from his horse he clutched at me, and my 
blue goggles remained in his hand ; and away plimged 
the beast, dragging him with his foot in the stirrup. 

"I fled through the woods and made good my 
escape, leaving the accusing goggles behind me in 
that dead man's hand. 

"This was fifteen or sixteen years ago. Since then 
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MARK TWAIN 

I have wandered aimlessly about the earth, some- 
times at work, sometimes idle; sometimes with 
money, sometimes with none ; but always tired of life, 
and wishing it was done, for my mission here was 
finished with the act of that night; and the only 
pleasure, solace, satisfaction I had, in all those tedious 
years, was in the daily reflection, ' I have killed him ! ' 
"Four years ago my health began to fail. I had 
wandered into Munich, in my purposeless way. 
Being out of money I sought work, and got it; did 
my duty faithfully about a year, and was then given 
the berth of night watchman yonder in that dead- 
house which you visited lately. The place suited 
my mood. I liked it. I liked being with the dead — 
liked being alone with them. I used to wander 
among those rigid corpses, and peer into their austere 
faces, by the hour. The later the time, the more 
impressive it was; I preferred the late time. Some- 
times I turned the lights low; this gave perspective, 
you see ; and the imagination could play ; always, the 
dim, receding ranks of the dead inspired one with 
weird and fascinating fancies. Two years ago — I 
had been there a year then — I was sitting all alone 
in the watch-room, one gusty winter's night, chilled, 
numb, comfortless; drowsing gradually into uncon- 
sciousness ; the sobbing of the wind and the slamming 
of distant shutters falling fainter and fainter upon 
my dulling ear each moment, when sharp and sud- 
denly that dead-bell rang out a blood-curdling 
alarum over my head! The shock of it nearly 
paralyzed me; for it was the first time I had ever 
heard it. 

274 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

"I gathered myself together and flew to the 
corpse-room. About midway down the outside rank, 
a shrouded figure was sitting upright, wagging its 
head slowly from one side to the other — a grisly 
spectacle! Its side was toward me. I hurried to it 
and peered into its face. Heavens, it was Adler! 

* ' Can you divine what my first thought was ? Put 
into words, it was this : ' It seems, then, you escaped 
me once: there will be a different result this time!* 

"Evidently this creature was suffering unimagi- 
nable terrors. Think what it must have been to 
wake up in the midst of that voiceless hush, and look 
out over that grim congregation of the dead ! What 
gratitude shone in his skinny white face when he 
saw a living form before him! And how the fer- 
vency of this mute gratitude was augmented when 
his eyes fell upon the life-giving cordials which I 
carried in my hands! Then imagine the horror 
which came into his pinched face when I put the 
cordials behind me, and said mockingly: 

'"Speak up, Franz Adler — call upon these dead! 
Doubtless they will listen and have pity; but here 
there is none else that will.' 

"He tried to speak, but that part of the shroud 
which bound his jaws held firm, and would not let 
him. He tried to lift imploring hands, but they 
were crossed upon his breast and tied. I said : 

"'Shout, Franz Adler; make the sleepers in the 
distant streets hear you and bring help. Shout — 
and lose no time, for there is little to lose. What, 
you cannot? That is a pity; but it is no matter — 
it does not always bring help. When you and your 

ays 



MARK TWAIN 

cousin murdered a helpless woman and child in a 
cabin in Arkansas — my wife, it was, and my child! 
— ^they shrieked for help, you remember; but it did 
no good; you remember that it did no good, is it 
not so? Your teeth chatter — then why cannot you 
shout? Loosen the bandages with your hands — 
then you can. Ah, I see — ^yotu* hands are tied, they 
cannot aid you. How strangely things repeat them- 
selves, after long years ; for my hands were tied, that 
night, you remember? Yes, tied much as 3^ours are 
now — ^how odd that is! I could not pull free. It 
did not occur to you to imtie me; it does not occur 
to me to untie you. 'Sh — ! there's a late footstep. 
It is coming this way. Hark, how near it is! One 
can count the footfalls — one — two — three. There — 
it is just outside. Now is the time! Shout, man, 
shout! it is the one sole chance between you and 
eternity ! Ah, you see you have delayed too long — 
it is gone by. There — ^it is dying out. It is gone! 
Think of it — ^reflect upon it — you have heard a 
human footstep for the last time. How curious it 
must be, to listen to so common a soimd as that and 
know that one will never hear the fellow to it again.' 

**0h, my friend, the agony in that shrouded face 
was ecstasy to see ! I thought of a new torture, and 
applied it — ^assisting myself with a trifle of lying 
invention : 

'"That poor Kruger tried to save my wife and 
child, and I did him a gratefiil good turn for it 
when the time came. I persuaded him to rob you; 
and I and a woman helped him to desert, and got 
him away in safety.' 

276 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

''A look as of surprise and triumph shone out 
dimly through the anguish in my victim's face. I 
was disturbed, disquieted. I said: 

'' *What, then— didn't he escape?* 

*'A negative shake of the head. 

* ' ' No ? What happened, then ? * 

The satisfaction in the shrouded face was still 
plainer. The man tried to mumble out some words 
— could not succeed ; tried to express something with 
his obstructed hands — failed; paused a moment, then 
feebly tilted his head, in a meaning way, toward the 
corpse that lay nearest him. 

'"'Dead?' I asked. Tailed to escape? caught in 
the act and shot?' 

** Negative shake of the head. 

''^ How, then?' 

"Again the man tried to do something with his 
hands. I watched closely, but could not guess the 
intent. I bent over and watched still more intently. 
He had tvristed a thimib around and was weakly 
punching at his breast with it. 

"*Ah — stabbed, do you mean?' 

"Affirmative nod, accompanied by a spectral smile 
of such devilishness that it struck an awakening light 
through my dull brain, and I cried : 

"'Did I stab him, mistaking him for you? for 
that stroke was meant for none but you." 

"The affirmative nod of the re-dying rascal was 
as joyous as his failing strength was able to put into 
its expression. 

"'Oh, miserable, miserable me, to slaughter the 
pitying soul that stood a friend to my darlings when 

277 



MARK TWAIN 

they were helpless, and would have saved them if 
he could! miserable, oh, miserable, miserable me!' 

"I fancied I heard the muffled gurgle of a mock- 
ing laugh. I took my face out of my hands, and 
saw my enemy sinking back upon his inclined 
board. 

"He was a satisfactory long time dying. He had 
a wonderful vitality, an astonishing constitution. 
Yes, he was a pleasant long time at it. I got a chair 
and a newspaper, and sat down by him and read. 
Occasionally I took a sip of brandy. This was 
necessary, on account of the cold. But I did it 
partly because I saw that, along at first, whenever 
I reached for the bottle, he thought I was going to 
give him some. I read aloud: mainly imaginary 
accounts of people snatched from the grave's thresh- 
old and restored to life and vigor by a few spoonfuls 
of liquor and a warm bath. Yes, he had a long, 
hard death of it — three hotirs and six minutes, from 
the time he rang his bell. 

"It is believed that in all these eighteen years that 
have elapsed since the institution of the corpse- 
watch, no shrouded occupant of the Bavarian dead- 
houses has ever rung its bell. Well, it is a harmless 
belief. Let it stand at that. 

"The chill of that death-room had penetrated my 
bones. It revived and fastened upon me the dis- 
ease which had been afflicting me, but which, up to 
that night, had been steadily disappearing. That 
man murdered my wife and my child; and in three 
days hence he will have added me to his list. No 
matter — God! how delicious the memory of it! I 

278 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

caught him escaping from his grave, and thrust him 
back into it ! 

"After that night I was confined to my bed for a 
week; but as soon as I could get about I went to 
the dead-house books and got the number of the 
house which Adler had died in. A wretched lodging- 
house it was. It was my idea that he would natu- 
rally have gotten hold of Kruger's effects, being his 
cousin; and I wanted to get Kruger's watch, if I 
could. But while I was sick, Adler's things had been 
sold and scattered, all except a few old letters, and 
some odds and ends of no value. However, through 
those letters I traced out a son of Kruger's, the only 
relative he left. He is a man of thirty, now, a shoe- 
maker by trade, and living at No. 14 Konigstrasse, 
Mannheim — widower, with several small children. 
Without explaining to him why, I have furnished 
two- thirds of his support ever since. 

*'Now, as to that watch — see how strangely things 
happen ! I traced it around and about Germany for 
more than a year, at considerable cost in money and 
vexation; and at last I got it. Got it, and was un- 
speakably glad; opened it, and found nothing in it! 
Why, I might have known that that bit of paper 
was not going to stay there all this time. Of course 
I gave up that ten thousand dollars then; gave it 
up, and dropped it out of my mind; and most sorrow- 
fully, for I had wanted it for Kruger's son. 

**Last night, when I consented at last that I must 
die, I began to make ready. I proceeded to bum 
all useless papers; and sure enough, from a batch of 
Adler's, not previously examined with thoroughness, 

279 



MARK TWAIN 

out dropped that long-desired scrap! I recognized 
it in a moment. Here it is — I will translate it : 

"Brick Uvery stable, stone foundation, middle of town, comer 
of Orleans and Market. Comer toward Court-house. Third 
stone, fourth row. Stick notice there, saying how many are 
to come. 

''There — take it, and preserve it! Kruger ex- 
plained that that stone was removable; and that it 
was in the north wall of the foundation, fourth row 
from the top, and third stone from the west. The 
money is secreted behind it. He said the closing 
sentence was a blind, to mislead in case the paper 
should fall into wrong hands. It probably per- 
formed that office for Adler. 

"Now I want to beg that when you make your 
intended journey down the river, you will hunt out 
that hidden money, and send it to Adam Kruger, 
care of the Mannheim address which I have men- 
tioned. It will make a rich man of him, and I shall 
sleep the sounder in my grave for knowing that I 
have done what I could for the son of the man who 
tried to save my wife and child — albeit my hand 
ignorantly struck him down, whereas the impulse of 
my heart would have been to shield and serve him." 



CHAPTER XXXII 

THE DISPOSAL OF A BONANZA 

** OUCH was Ritter's narrative," said I to my two 

v3 friends. There was a profound and impres- 
sive silence, which lasted a considerable time; then 
both men broke into a fusillade of excited and ad- 
miring ejaculations over the strange incidents of the 
tale : and this, along with a rattling fire of questions, 
was kept up imtil all hands were about out of breath. 
Then my friends began to cool down, and draw off, 
under shelter of occasional volleys, into silence and 
abysmal re very. For ten minutes, now, there was 
stillness. Then Rogers said dreamily: 

*'Ten thousand dollars!" Adding, after a con- 
siderable pause : 

"Ten thousand. It is a heap of money." 

Presently the poet inquired: 

*'Are you going to send it to him right away?" 

"Yes," I said. "It is a queer question." 

No reply. After a little, Rogers asked hesitatingly : 

''All of it? That is— I mean—" 

^'Certainly, all of it." 

I was going to say more, but stopped — was stopped 
by a train of thought which started up in me. 
Thompson spoke, but my mind was absent and I did 
not catch what he said. But I heard Rogers answer; 

281 



MARK TWAIN 

**Yet, it seems so to me. It ought to be quite 
sufficient; for I don't see that he has done anything." 

Presently the poet said: 

"When you come to look at it, it is more than 
sufficient. Just look at it — ^five thousand dollars! 
Why, he couldn't spend it in a lifetime! And it 
would injure him, too; perhaps ruin him — ^you want 
to look at that. In a little while he would throw his 
last away, shut up his shop, maybe take to drinking, 
maltreat his motherless children, drift into other evil 
courses, go steadily from bad to worse — " 

''Yes, that's it," interrupted Rogers fervently, 
"I've seen it a hundred times — ^yes, more than a 
hundred. You put money into the hands of a man 
like that, if you want to destroy him, that's all. 
Just put money into his hands, it's all you've got to 
do; and if it don't pull him down, and take all the 
usefulness out of him, and all the self-respect and 
everything, then I don't know human nature — ain't 
that so, Thompson? And even if we were to give 
him a third of it; why, in less than six months — " 

"Less than six weeks, you'd better say!" said I, 
warming up and breaking in. "Unless he had that 
three thousand dollars in safe hands where he 
couldn't touch it, he would no more last you six 
weeks than — " 

"Of course he wouldn't!" said Thompson. "I've 
edited books for that kind of people; and the mo- 
ment they get their hands on the royalty — maybe 
it's three thousand, maybe it's two thousand — " 

"What business has that shoemaker with two 
thousand dollars, I should like to know?" broke in 

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LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

Rogers earnestly. '*A man perhaps perfectly con- 
tented now, there in Mannheim, surrounded by his 
own class, eating his bread with the appetite which 
laborious industry alone can give, enjoying his 
humble life, honest, upright, pure in heart, and 
blest! — ^yes, I say blest! above all the myriads that 
go in silk attire and walk the empty, artificial roimd 
of social folly — ^but just you put that temptation 
before him once ! just you lay fifteen hundred dollars 
before a man like that, and say — " 

"Fifteen hundred devils!" cried I. *'Five him- 
dred would rot his principles, paralyze his industry, 
drag him to the nunshop, thence to the gutter, 
thence to the almshouse, thence to — " 

*'Why put upon ourselves this crime, gentlemen?** 
interrupted the poet earnestly and appealingly. 
* ' He is happy where he is, and as he is. Every senti- 
ment of honor, every sentiment of charity, every 
sentiment of high and sacred benevolence warns us, 
beseeches us, commands us to leave him imdis- 
turbed. That is real friendship, that is true friend- 
ship. We could follow other courses that would be 
more showy; but none that would be so truly kind 
and wise, depend upon it.'* 

After some further talk, it became evident that 
each of us, down in his heart, felt some misgivings 
over this settlement of the matter. It was manifest 
that we all felt that we ought to send the poor shoe- 
. maker something. There was long and thoughtful 
discussion of this point, and we finally decided to 
send him a chromo. 

Well, now that everything seemed to be arranged 
283 



MARK TWAIN 

satisfactorily to everybody concerned, a new trouble 
broke out: it transpired that these two men were 
expecting to share equally in the money with me. 
That was not my idea. I said that if they got half 
of it between them they might consider themselves 
lucky. Rogers said: 

*'Who would have had any if it hadn't been for 
me? I flung out the first hint — but for that, it 
would all have gone to the shoemaker." 

Thompson said that he was thinking of the thing 
himself at the very moment that Rogers had origi- 
nally spoken. 

I retorted that the idea would have occurred to 
me plenty soon enough, and without anybody's help. 
I was slow about thinking, maybe, but I was sure. 

This matter warmed up into a quarrel; then into 
a fight; and each man got pretty badly battered. 
As soon as I got myself mended up after a fashion, 
I ascended to the hurricane-deck in a pretty sour 
humor. I found Captain McCord there, and said, 
as pleasantly as my humor would permit: 

"I have come to say good-by, captain. I wish to 
go ashore at Napoleon." 

*'Go ashore where?" 

*' Napoleon." 

The captain laughed; but seeing that I was not 
in a jovial mood, stopped that and said: 

*'But are you serious?" 

** Serious? I certainly am." 

The captain glanced up at the pilot-house and 
said : 

*'He wants to get off at Napoleon!" 
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LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

''Napoleonr 

*' That's what he says." 

''Great Caesar's ghost!" 

Uncle Mumford approached along the deck. The 
captain said: 

*' Uncle, here's a friend of yours wants to get off 
at Napoleon!" 

"Well, by !" 

I said: 

''Come, what is all this about? Can't a man go 
ashore at Napoleon, if he wants to?" 

**Why, hang it, don't you know? There isn'4 any 
Napoleon any more. Hasn't been for years and 
years. The Arkansas River burst through it, tore 
it all to rags, and emptied it into the Mississippi!" 

''Carried the whole town away? Banks, churches, 
jails, newspaper offices, coin-t - house, theater, fire 
department, livery stable — everything?'' 

"Everything! Just a fifteen-minute job, or such 
a matter. Didn't leave hide nor hair, shred nor 
shingle of it, except the fag-end of a shanty and one 
brick chimney. This boat is paddling along right 
now where the dead-center of that town used to be; 
yonder is the brick chimney — all that's left of Na- 
poleon. These dense woods on the right used to be 
a mile back of the town. Take a look behind you 
— up-stream — now you begin to recognize this coim- 
try, don't you?" 

"Yes, I do recognize it now. It is the most won- 
derful thing I ever heard of ; by a long shot the most 
wonderful — and imexpected . ' ' 

Mr. Thompson and Mr. Rogers had arrived, mean- 
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MARK TWAIN 

time, with satchels and umbrellas, and had silently 
listened to the captain's news. Thompson put a 
half-dollar in my hand and said softly: 

"For my share of the chromo." 

Rogers followed suit. 

Yes, it was an astonishing thing to see the Missis- 
sippi rolling between unpeopled shores and straight 
over the spot where I used to see a good big self- 
complacent town twenty years ago. Town that was 
county-seat of a great and important county; town 
with a big United States marine hospital; town of 
innumerable fights — an inquest every day; town 
where I had used to know the prettiest girl, and the 
most accomplished, in the whole Mississippi valley; 
town where we were handed the first printed news 
of the Pennsylvania's mournful disaster a quarter of 
a century ago; a town no more — swallowed up, van- 
ished, gone to feed the fishes; nothing left but a 
fragment of a shanty and a crumbling brick chimney ! 



CHAPTER XXXIII 

REFRESHMENTS AND ETHICS 

IN regard to Island 74, which is situated not far 
from the former Napoleon, a freak of the river 
here has sorely perplexed the laws of men and made 
them a vanity and a jest. When the state of Arkan- 
sas was chartered, she controlled "to the center of 
the river" — a most unstable line. The state of 
Mississippi claimed "to the channel" — another shifty 
and unstable line. No. 74 belonged to Arkansas. 
By and by a cut-off threw this big island out of 
Arkansas, and yet not within Mississippi. "Middle 
of the river" on one side of it, "channel" on the 
other. That is as I understand the problem. Wheth- 
er I have got the details right or wrong, this fact 
remains: that here is this big and exceedingly valu- 
able island of four thousand acres, thrust out in the 
cold, and belonging to neither the one state nor the 
other; paying taxes to neither, owing allegiance to 
neither. One man owns the whole island, and of 
right is "the man without a country." 

Island 92 belongs to Arkansas. The river moved 
it over and joined it to Mississippi. A chap estab- 
lished a whisky-shop there, without a Mississippi 
license, and enriched himself upon Mississippi cus- 

J>87 



MARK TWAIN 

torn under Arkansas protection (where no license was 
in those days required). 

We gHded steadily down the river in the usual 
privacy — steamboat or other moving thing seldom 
seen. Scenery as always; stretch upon stretch of 
almost unbroken forest on both sides of the river; 
soundless solitude. Here and there a cabin or two, 
standing in small openings on the gray and grassless 
banks — cabins which had formerly stood a quarter 
or half mile farther to the front, and gradually been 
pulled farther and farther back as the shores caved 
in. As at Pilcher's Point, for instance, where the 
cabins had been moved back three himdred yards in 
three months, so we were told ; but the caving banks 
had already caught up with them, and they were 
being conveyed rearward once more. 

Napoleon had but small opinion of Greenville, Mis- 
sissippi, in the old times; but behold, Napoleon is 
gone to the catfishes, and here is Greenville full of 
life and activity, and making a considerable flourish 
in the valley; having three thousand inhabitants, it 
is said, and doing a gross trade of two million five 
hundred thousand dollars annually. A growing 
town. 

There was much talk on the boat about the Cal- 
hoim Land Company, an enterprise which is ex- 
pected to work wholesome results. Colonel Cal- 
houn, a grandson of the statesman, went to Boston 
and formed a syndicate which purchased a large 
tract of land on the river, in Chicot Coimty, Arkansas 
— some ten thousand acres — for cotton - growing. 
The purpose is to work on a cash basis : buy at first 

288 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

hands, and handle their own product; supply their 
negro laborers with provisions and necessaries at a 
trifling profit, say eight or ten per cent,; furnish 
them comfortable quarters, etc., and encourage them 
to save money and remain on the place. If this 
proves a financial success, as seems quite certain, 
they propose to estabhsh a banking-house in Green- 
ville, and lend money at an imburdensome rate of 
interest — six per cent, is spoken of. 

The trouble heretofore has been — I am quoting 
remarks of planters and steamboatmen — that the 
planters, although owning the land, were without 
cash capital ; had to hypothecate both land and crop 
to carry on the business. Consequently, the com- 
mission dealer who furnishes the money takes some 
risk and demands big interest — usually ten per cent., 
and two and one-half per cent, for negotiating the 
loan. The planter has also to buy his supplies 
through the same dealer, paying commissions and 
profits. Then when he ships his crop, the dealer 
adds his commissions, insurance, etc. So, taking it 
by and large, and first and last, the dealer's share 
of that crop is about twenty-five per cent.^ 

A cotton-planter's estimate of the average margin 
of profit on planting, in his section: One man and 
mule will raise ten acres of cotton, giving ten bales 
cotton, worth, say five hundred dollars; cost of 
producing, say three hundred and fifty dollars; net 

' " But what can the state do where the people are under subjection 
to rates of mterest ranging from eighteen to thirty per cent., and 
are also under the necessity of purchasing their crops in advance 
even of planting, at these rates, for the privilege of purchasing all 
their supplies at one hundred per cent, profit?" — Edward Atkinson. 

289 



MARK TWAIN 

profit, one hundred and fifty dollars; or fifteen dollars 
per acre. There is also a profit now from the cotton- 
seed, which formerly had little value — none where 
much transportation was necessary. In sixteen hun- 
dred poimds crude cotton, four hundred are lint, 
worth, say, ten cents a pound; and twelve hundred 
potinds of seed, worth twelve dollars or thirteen 
dollars per ton. Maybe in future even the stents 
will not be throvm away. Mr. Edward Atkinson 
says that for each bale of cotton there are fifteen 
htmdred pounds of stems, and that these are very 
rich in phosphate of lime and potash; that when 
ground and mixed with ensilage or cotton-seed meal 
(which is too rich for use as fodder in large quan- 
tities), the stem mixture makes a superior food, rich 
in all the elements needed for the production of 
milk, meat, and bone. Heretofore the stems have 
been considered a nuisance. 

Complaint is made that the planter remains 
grouty toward the former slave, since the war; will 
have nothing but a chill business relation with him, 
no sentiment permitted to intrude; will not keep a 
*' store" himself, and supply the negro's wants and 
thus protect the negro's pocket and make him able 
and willing to stay on the place and an advantage 
to him to do it, but lets that privilege to some thrifty 
Israelite, who encourages the thoughtless negro and 
wife to buy all sorts of things which they cotdd do 
without — ^buy on credit, at big prices, month after 
month, credit based on the negro's share of the 
growing crop; and at the end of the season, the 
negro's share belongs to the Israelite, the negro is in 

290 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

debt besides, is discouraged, dissatisfied, restless, and 
both he and the planter are injured; for he will take 
steamboat and migrate, and the planter must get a 
stranger in his place who does not know him, does 
not care for him, will fatten the Israelite a season, 
and follow his predecessor per steamboat. 

It is hoped that the Calhoun Company will show, 
by its humane and protective treatment of its labor- 
ers, that its method is the most profitable for both 
planter and negro; and it is beHeved that a general 
adoption of that method will then follow. 

And where so many are saying their say, shall not 
the barkeeper testify? He is thoughtful, observant, 
never drinks ; endeavors to earn his salary, and would 
earn it if there were custom enough. He says the 
people along here in Mississippi and Louisiana will 
send up the river to buy vegetables rather than raise 
them, and they will come aboard at the landings and 
buy fruits of the barkeeper. Thinks they ** don't 
know anything but cotton"; believes they don't 
know how to raise vegetables and fruit — "at least 
the most of them." Says "a nigger will go to H for 
a watermelon" ("H" is all I find in the stenog- 
rapher's report — means Halifax probably, though 
that seems a good way to go for a watermelon). 
Barkeeper buys watermelons for five cents up the 
river, brings them down and sells them for fifty. 
"Why does he mix such elaborate and picturesque 
drinks for the nigger hands on the boat?" Because 
they won't have any other. "They want a big 
drink: don't make any difference what you make it 
of, they want the worth of their money. You give 

291 



MARK TWAIN 

a nigger a plain gill of half-a-dollar brandy for five 
cents — will he touch it? No. Ain't size enough to 
it. But you put up a pint of all kinds of worthless 
rubbish, and heave in some red stuff to make it 
beautiful — red's the main thing — and he wouldn't 
put down that glass to go to a circus." All the bars 
on this Anchor Line are rented and owned by one 
firm. They furnish the liquors from their own 
establishment, and hire the barkeepers "on salary.'* 
Good liquors? Yes, on some of the boats, where 
there are the kind of passengers that want it and can 
pay for it. On the other boats? No. Nobody but 
the deck-hands and firemen to drink it. ''Brandy? 
Yes, I've got brandy, plenty of it; but you don't 
want any of it unless you've made your will." It 
isn't as it used to be in the old times. Then every- 
body traveled by steamboat, everybody drank, and 
everybody treated everybody else. *'Now most 
everybody goes by railroad, and the rest don't 
drink." In the old times, the barkeeper owned the 
bar himself, "and was gay and smarty and talky and 
all jeweled up, and was the toniest aristocrat on the 
boat; used to make two thousand dollars on a trip. 
A father who left his son a steamboat bar, left him 
a fortime. Now he leaves him board and lodging; 
yes, and washing if a shirt a trip will do. Yes, 
indeedy, times are changed. Why, do you know, 
on the principal line of boats on the Upper Missis- 
sippi they don't have any bar at all! Sounds like 
poetry, but it's the petrified truth." 



CHAPTER XXXIV 

TOUGH YARNS 

STACK ISLAND. I remembered Stack Island; 
also Lake Providence, Louisiana — which is the 
first distinctly Southern-looking town you come to, 
downward bound ; lies level and low, shade-trees htmg 
with venerable gray-beards of Spanish moss; ** rest- 
ful, pensive, Sunday aspect about the place," com- 
ments Uncle Mumford, with feeling — also with truth. 
A Mr. H. furnished some minor details of fact 
concerning this region which I would have hesitated 
to believe, if I had not known him to be a steamboat 
mate. He was a passenger of ours, a resident of 
Arkansas City, and botmd to Vicksburg to join his 
boat, a little Simflower packet. He was an austere 
man, and had the reputation of being singularly un- 
worldly, for a river-man. Among other things, he 
said that Arkansas had been injured and kept back 
by generations of exaggerations concerning the 
mosquitoes there. One may smile, said he, and turn 
the matter off as being a small thing ; but when you 
come to look at the effects produced, in the way 
of discouragement of immigration and diminished 
values of property, it was quite the opposite of a 
small thing, or thing in any wise to, be coughed down 
or sneered at. These mosquitoes had been per- 

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MARK TWAIN 

sistently represented as being formidable and lawless; 
whereas *'the truth is, they are feeble, insignificant 
in size, diffident to a fault, sensitive" — and so on, 
and so on; you would have supposed he was talldng 
about his family. But if he was soft on the Arkansas 
mosquitoes, he was hard enough on the mosquitoes 
of Lake Providence to make up for it — "those Lake 
Providence colossi," as he finely called them. He 
said that two of them could whip a dog, and that 
four of them could hold a man down; and except 
help come, they would kill him — "butcher him," as 
he expressed it. Referred in a sort of casual way — 
and yet significant way, to "the fact that the life 
policy in its simplest form is unknown in Lake Provi- 
dence — they take out a mosquito policy besides." 
He told many remarkable things about those law- 
less insects. Among others, said he had seen them 
try to vote. Noticing that this statement seemed to 
be a good deal of a strain on us, he modified it a 
little; said he might have been mistaken as to that 
particular, but knew he had seen them around the 
polls "canvassing." 

There was another passenger — ^friend of H.'s — 
who backed up the harsh evidence against those 
mosquitoes, and detailed some stirring adventures 
which he had had with them. The stories were 
pretty sizable, merely pretty sizable; yet Mr. H. 
was continually interrupting with a cold, inexorable 
"Wait — ^knock off twenty-five per cent, of that; 
now go on"; or, "Wait — you are getting that too 
strong; cut it down, cut it down — ^you get a leetle 
too much costumery onto your statements: always 

294 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

dress a fact in tights, never in an ulster"; or, "Par- 
don, once more; if you are going to load anything 
more onto that statement, you want to get a couple 
of lighters and tow the rest, because it's drawing all 
the water there is in the river already ; stick to facts 
— just stick to the cold facts; what these gentlemen 
want for a book is the frozen truth — ain't that so, 
gentlemen?" He explained privately that it was 
necessary to watch this man all the time, and keep 
him within bounds; it woidd not do to neglect this 
precaution, as he, Mr. H., "knew to his sorrow." 
Said he, "I will not deceive you; he told me such a 
monstrous lie once that it swelled my left ear up, 
and spread it so that I was actually not able to see 
out around it ; it remained so for months, and people 
came miles to see me fan myself with it." 



CHAPTER XXXV 

VICKSBURG DURING THE TROUBLE 

WE used to plow past the lofty hill-city, Vicks- 
burg, down-stream; but we cannot do that 
now. A cut-off has made a country town of it, like 
Osceola, St. Genevieve, and several others. There 
is currentless water — also a big island — ^in front of 
Vicksburg now. You come down the river the other 
side of the island, then turn and come up to the 
town, that is, in high water: in low water you can't 
come up, but must land some distance below it. 

Signs and scars still remain, as reminders of Vicks- 
burg's tremendous war experiences; earthworks, 
trees crippled by the cannon-balls, cave refuges in 
the clay precipices, etc. The caves did good service 
during the six weeks' bombardment of the city — 
May 1 8 to July 4, 1863. They were used by the 
non-combatants — mainly by the women and chil- 
dren; not to live in constantly, but to fly to for 
safety on occasion. They were mere holes, tunnels 
driven into the perpendicular clay-bank, then 
branched Y-shape, within the hill. Life in Vicks- 
burg during the six weeks was perhaps — ^but wait; 
here are some materials out of which to reproduce it : 

Population, twenty-seven thousand soldiers and 
three thousand non-combatants; the city utterly 

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LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

cut off from the world — walled solidly in, the front- 
age by gunboats, the rear by soldiers and batteries; 
hence, no buying and selling with the outside; no 
passing to and fro; no godspeeding a parting guest, 
no welcoming a coming one; no printed acres of 
world-wide news to be read at breakfast, mornings — 
a tedious dull absence of such matter, instead; hence, 
also, no running to see steamboats smoking into view 
in the distance up or down, and plowing toward the 
town — for none came, the river lay vacant and un- 
disturbed; no rush and turmoil around the railway- 
station, no struggling over bewildered swarms of 
passengers by noisy mobs of hackmen — all quiet 
there; flour two hundred dollars a barrel, sugar 
thirty, com ten dollars a bushel, bacon five dollars 
a pound, rum a hundred dollars a gallon, other things 
in proportion; consequently, no roar and racket of 
drays and carriages tearing along the streets; noth- 
ing for them to do, among that handful of non- 
combatants of exhausted means; at three o'clock in 
the morning, silence — silence so dead that the meas- 
ured tramp of a sentinel can be heard a seemingly 
impossible distance; out of hearing of this lonely 
soimd, perhaps the stillness is absolute: all in a 
moment come ground-shaking thunder-crashes of 
artillery, the sky is cob webbed with the crisscrossing 
red lines streaming from soaring bombshells, and a 
rain of iron fragments descends upon the city, de- 
scends upon the empty streets — streets which are 
not empty a moment later, but mottled with dim 
figures of frantic women and children scurrying from 
home and bed toward the cave dungeons — encour- 

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MARK TWAIN 

aged by the humorous grim soldiery, who shout * * Rats, 
to your holes!" and laugh. 

The cannon-thunder rages, shells scream and 
crash overhead, the iron rain pours down, one hour, 
two hours, three, possibly six, then stops; silence 
follows, but the streets are still empty; the silence 
continues; by and by a head projects from a cave 
here and there and yonder, and reconnoitres cau- 
tiously; the silence still continuing, bodies follow 
heads, and jaded, half-smothered creatures group 
themselves about, stretch their cramped limbs, draw 
in deep draughts of the grateful fresh air, gossip with 
the neighbors from the next cave ; maybe straggle off 
home presently, or take a lounge through the town, 
if the stillness continues; and will scurry to the 
holes again, by and by, when the war-tempest breaks 
forth once more. 

There being but three thousand of these cave- 
dwellers — merely the population of a village — would 
they not come to know each other, after a week 
or two, and familiarly; insomuch that the fortunate 
or unfortunate experiences of one would be of interest 
to all? 

Those are the materials ftmnished by history. 
From them might not almost anybody reproduce for 
himself the life of that time in Vicksburg? Could 
you, who did not experience it, come nearer to re- 
producing it to the imagination of another non- 
participant than could a Vicksburger who did expe- 
rience it? It seems impossible; and yet there are 
reasons why it might not really be. When one 
makes his first voyage in a ship, it is an experience 

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THE CAVE DWELLERS 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

which multitudinously bristles with striking novel- 
ties; novelties which are in such sharp contrast with 
all this person's former experiences that they take 
a seemingly deathless grip upon his imagination and 
memory. By tongue or pen he can make a lands- 
man Hve that strange and stirring voyage over with 
him; make him see it all and feel it all. But if he 
wait? If he make ten voyages in succession — what 
then? Why, the thing has lost color, snap, surprise; 
and has become commonplace. The man would 
have nothing to tell that would quicken a landsman's 
pulse. 

Years ago I talked with a couple of the Vicksburg 
non-combatants — a man and his wife. Left to tell 
their story in their own way, those people told it 
without fire, almost without interest. 

A week of their wonderful life there would have 
made their tongues eloquent forever perhaps; but 
they had six weeks of it, and that wore the novelty 
all out; they got used to being bombshelled out of 
home and into the groimd; the matter became com- 
monplace. After that, the possibility of their ever 
being startlingly interesting in their talks about it 
was gone. What the man said was to this effect: 

It got to be Sunday all the time. Seven Sundays in the week 
— ^to us, any\\'ay. We hadn't anything to do, and time hung 
heavy. Seven Sundays, and all of them broken up at one time 
or another, in the day or in the night, by a few hours of the 
awful storm of fire and thunder and iron. At first we used to 
shin for the holes a good deal faster than we did afterward. 
The first time I forgot the children, and Maria fetched them both 
along. When she was all safe in the cave she fainted. Two or 
three weeks afterward, when she was running for the holes, one 

299 



MARK TWAIN 

morning, through a shell-shower, a big shell burst near her and 
covered her all over with dirt, and a piece of iron carried away 
her game-bag of false hair from the back of her head. Well, she 
stopped to get that game-bag before she shoved along again! 
Was getting used to things already, you see. We all got so that 
we could tell a good deal about shells; and after that we didn't 
always go under shelter if it was a Hght shower. Us men would 
loaf around and talk; and a man would say, "There she goes!'* 
and name the kind of shell it was from the sound of it, and go 
on talking — if there wasn't any danger from it. If a shell was 
bursting close over us, we stopped talking and stood still; im- 
comfortable, yes, but it wasn't safe to move. When it let go, 
we went on talking again, if nobody was hurt — ^maybe saying, 
"That was a ripper!" or some such commonplace comment before 
we resumed; or, maybe, we would see a shell poising itself away 
high in the air overhead. In that case, every fellow just whipped 
out a sudden "See you again, gents!" and shoved. Often and 
often I saw gangs of ladies promenading the streets, looking as 
cheerful as you please, and keeping an eye canted up watching 
the shells; and I've seen them stop still when they were uncertain 
about what a shell was going to do, and wait and make certain; 
and after that they sa'ntered along again, or lit out for shelter, 
according to the verdict. Streets in some towns have a litter of 
pieces of paper, and odds and ends of one sort or another lying 
around. Ours hadn't; they had iron litter. Sometimes a man 
would gather up all the iron fragments and unbursted shells in 
his neighborhood, and pile them into a kind of monument in his 
front yard — a ton of it, sometimes. No glass left; glass couldn't 
stand such a bombardment; it was all shivered out. Windows 
of the houses vacant — looked like eyeholes in a skull. Whole 
panes were as scarce as news. 

We had church Sundays. Not many there, along at first; 
but by and by pretty good turnouts. I've seen service stop a 
minute, and everybody sit quiet — ^no voice heard, pretty funeral- 
like then — and all the more so on account of the av/ful boom and 
crash going on outside and overhead; and pretty soon, when a 
body could be heard, service would go on again. Organs and 
church music mixed up with a bombardment is a powerful queer 
combination — along at first. Coming out of church, one morn- 
ing, we had an accident — the only one that happened around me 
on a Sunday. I was just having a hearty hand-shake with a 

300 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

friend I hadn't seen for a while, and saying, "Drop into our cave 
to-night, after bombardment; we've got hold of a pint of prime 
wh — " Whisky, I was going to say, you know, but a shell 
interrupted. A chunk of it cut the man's arm off, and left it 
dangling in my hand. And do you know the thing that is 
going to stick the longest in my memory, and outlast everything 
else, Httle and big, I reckon, is the mean thought I had then? 
It was, "the whisky is saved.^' And yet, don't you know, it was 
kind of excusable; because it was as scarce as diamonds, and we 
had only just that little; never had another taste during the siege. 

Sometimes the caves were desperately crowded, and always 
hot and close. Sometimes a cave had twenty or twenty-five 
people packed into it; no turning-room for anybody; air so foul, 
sometimes, you couldn't have made a candle bum in it. A child 
was bom in one of those caves one night. Think of that; why, 
it was like having it bom in a trunk. 

Twice we had sixteen people in our cave; and a number of 
times we had a dozen. Pretty suffocating in there. We always 
had eight; eight belonged there. Hunger and misery and sick- 
ness and fright and sorrow, and I don't know what all, got so 
loaded into them that none of them were ever rightly their 
old selves after the siege. They all died but three of us within 
a couple of years. One night a shell burst in front of the hole 
and caved it in and stopped it up. It was lively times, for a 
while, digging out. Some of us came near smothering. After 
that we made two openings — ought to have thought of it at first. 

Mule meat? No, we only got down to that the last day or two. 
Of course it was good; anything is good when you are starving. 



This man had kept a diary during — six weeks? 
No, only the first six days. The first day, eight 
close pages; the second, five; the third, one — ^loosely 
written; the fourth, three or four lines; a line or 
two the fifth and sixth days; seventh day, diary 
abandoned; life in terrific Vicksburg having now 
become commonplace and matter of course. 

The war history of Vicksburg has more about it 
to interest the general reader than that of any other 

301 



MARK TWAIN 

of the river towns. It is full of variety, full of inci- 
dent, full of the picturesque. Vicksburg held out 
longer than any other important river town, and 
saw warfare in all its phases, both land and water — 
the siege, the mine, the assault, the repulse, the 
bombardment, sickness, captivity, famine. 

The most beautiful of all the national cemeteries 
is here. Over the great gateway is this inscription: 

"here rest in peace 16,600 WHO DIED FOR THEIR 
COUNTRY IN THE YEARS 1861 TO 1865 " 

The grounds are nobly situated; being very high 
and commanding a wide prospect of land and river. 
They are tasteftdly laid out in broad terraces, with 
winding roads and paths ; and there is profuse adorn- 
ment in the way of semitropical shrubs and flowers; 
and in one part is a piece of native wild-wood, left 
just as it grew, and, therefore, perfect in its charm. 
Everything about this cemetery suggests the hand 
of the national government. The government's 
work is always conspicuous for excellence, solidity, 
thoroughness, neatness. The government does its 
work well in the first place, and then takes care of it. 

By winding roads — which were often cut to so 
great a depth between perpendicular walls that they 
were mere roofless tunnels — we drove out a mile or 
two and visited the monument which stands upon 
the scene of the surrender of Vicksburg to General 
Grant by General Pemberton. Its metal will pre- 
serve it from the hackings and chippings which so 
defaced its predecessor, which was of marble; but 

302 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

the brick foundations are crumbling, and it will 
tumble down by and by. It overlooks a picturesque 
region of wooded hills and ravines; and is not im- 
picturesque itself, being well smothered in flowering 
weeds. The battered remnant of the marble monu- 
ment has been removed to the National Cemetery. 

On the road, a quarter of a mile town ward, an 
aged colored man showed us, with pride, an un- 
exploded bombshell which had lain in his yard since 
the day it fell there during the siege. 

'*! was a-stannin' heah, an' de dog was a-stannin' 
heah; de dog he went for de shell, gwine to pick a 
fuss wid it; but I didn't; I says, 'Jes' make youseff 
at home heah; lay still whah you is, or bust up de 
place, jes' as you's a mind to, but 7's got business 
out in de woods, I has!'" 

Vicksburg is a town of substantial business streets 
and pleasant residences; it commands the commerce 
of the Yazoo and Sunflower rivers; is pushing rail- 
ways in several directions, through rich agricultural 
regions, and has a promising future of prosperity and 
importance. 

Apparently, nearly all the river towns, big and 
little, have made up their minds that they must 
look mainly to railroads for wealth and upbuilding, 
henceforth. They are acting upon this idea. The 
signs are that the next twenty years will bring 
about some noteworthy changes in the valley, in 
the direction of increased population and wealth, 
and in the intellectual advancement and the liberal- 
izing of opinion which go naturally with these. And 
yet, if one may judge by the past, the river towns 

303 



MARK TWAIN 

will manage to find and use a chance, here and 
there, to cripple and retard their progress. They 
kept themselves back in the days of steamboating 
supremacy, by a system of wharfage dues so stupidly 
graded as to prohibit what may be called small 
retail traffic in freights and passengers. Boats were 
charged such heavy wharfage that they could not 
afford to land for one or two passengers or a light 
lot of freight. Instead of encouraging the bringing 
of trade to their doors, the towns diligently and effect- 
ively discouraged it. They could have had many boats 
and low rates; but their policy rendered few boats 
and high rates compulsory. It was a policy which ex- 
tended — and extends — from New Orleans to St. Paul. 

We had a strong desire to make a trip up the 
Yazoo and the Sunflower — an interesting region at 
any time, but additionally interesting at this time, 
because up there the great inimdation was still to 
be seen in force — but we were nearly sure to have 
to wait a day or more for a New Orleans boat on 
retiun; so we were obliged to give up the project. 

Here is a story which I picked up on board the 
boat that night. I insert it in this place merely 
because it is a good story, not because it belongs 
here — for it doesn't. It was told by a passenger — a 
college professor — and was called to the surface in 
the course of a general conversation which began 
with talk about horses, drifted into talk about 
astronomy, then into talk about the lynching of the 
gamblers in Vicksburg half a century ago, then into 
talk about dreams and superstitions ; and ended, after 
midnight, in a dispute over free trade and protection, 

304 



CHAPTER XXXVI 

THE professor's YARN 

IT was in the early days. I was not a college 
professor then. I was a humble-minded young 
land-surveyor, with the world before me — to survey, 
in case anybody wanted it done. I had a contract 
to survey a route for a great mining ditch in Cali- 
fornia, and I was on my way thither, by sea — a three 
or four weeks' voyage. There were a good many 
passengers, but I had very little to say to them; 
reading and dreaming were my passions, and I 
avoided conversation in order to indulge these appe- 
tites. There were three professional gamblers on 
board — rough, repulsive fellows. I never had any 
talk with them, yet I could not help seeing them 
with some frequency, for they gambled in an upper- 
deck stateroom every day and night, and in my 
promenades I often had glimpses of them through 
their door, which stood a little ajar to let out the 
surplus tobacco-smoke and profanity. They were 
an evil and hateful presence, but I had to put up 
with it, of course. 

There was one other passenger who fell imder 
my eye a good deal, for he seemed determined to be 
friendly with me, and I could not have gotten rid 
of him without running some chance of hurting his 

305 



MARK TWAIN 

feelings, and I was far from wishing to do that. 
Besides, there was something engaging in his coim- 
trified simplicity and his beaming good nature. The 
first time I saw this Mr. John Backus, I guessed, 
from his clothes and his looks, that he was a grazier 
or farmer from the backwoods of some Western 
state — doubtless Ohio — and afterward, when he 
dropped into his personal history, and I discovered 
that he was sl cattle-raiser from interior Ohio, I was 
so pleased with my own penetration that I warmed 
toward him for verifying my instinct. 

He got to dropping alongside me every day, after 
breakfast, to help me make my promenade; and so, 
in the course of time, his easy-working jaw had told 
me everything about his business, his prospects, his 
family, his relatives, his politics — in fact, everything 
that concerned a Backus, living or dead. And mean- 
time I think he had managed to get out of me 
everything I knew about my trade, my tribe, my 
purposes, my prospects, and myself. He was a 
gentle and persuasive genius, and this thing showed 
it ; for I was not given to talking about my matters. 
I said something about triangulation, once; the 
stately word pleased his ear; he inquired what it 
meant; I explained. After that he quietly and in- 
offensively ignored my name, and always called me 
Triangle. 

What an enthusiast he was In cattle! At the bare 
name of a bull or a cow, his eye would light and 
his eloquent tongue would turn itself loose. As long 
as I would walk and listen, he would walk and talk; 
he knew all breeds, he loved all breeds, he caressed 

306 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

them all with his affectionate tongue. I tramped 
along in voiceless misery while the cattle question 
was up. When I could endure it no longer, I used 
to deftly insert a scientific topic into the conversa- 
tion; then my eye fired and his faded; my tongue 
fluttered, his stopped; hfe was a joy to me, and a 
sadness to him. 

One day he said, a Httle hesitatingly, and with 
somewhat of diffidence: 

"Triangle, would you mind coming down to my 
stateroom a minute and have a Httle talk on a 
certain matter?" 

I went with him at once. Arrived there, he put 
his head out, glanced up and down the saloon warily, 
then closed the door and locked it. We sat down 
on the sofa and he said: 

**I'm a-going to make a little proposition to you, 
and if it strikes you favorable, it '11 be a middling 
good thing for both of us. You ain't a-going out 
to CaHfomy for ftm, nuther am I — it's business, ain't 
that so? Well, you can do me a good turn, and so 
can I you, if we see fit. I've raked and scraped and 
saved a considerable many years, and I've got it all 
here.'* He unlocked an old hair tnmk, timibled a 
chaos of shabby clothes aside, and drew a short, 
stout bag into view for a moment, then buried it 
again and relocked the trunk. Dropping his voice 
to a cautious, low tone, he continued: "She's all 
there — a roimd ten thousand dollars in yellow-boys; 
now, this is my little idea: What I don't know about 
raising cattle ain't worth knowing. There's mints 
of money in it in Calif omy. Well, I know, and you 

307 



MARK TWAIN 

know, that all along a line that's being surveyed, 
there's Httle dabs of land that they call 'gores,' that 
fall to the surveyor free gratis for nothing. All 
you've got to do on your side is to survey in such a 
way that the 'gores' will fall on good fat land, then 
you turn 'em over to me, I stock 'em with cattle, 
in rolls the cash, I plank out your share of the 
dollars regular right along, and — " 

I was sorry to wither his blooming enthusiasm, 
but it could not be helped. I interrupted and said 
severely : 

"I am not that kind of a surveyor. Let us change 
the subject, Mr. Backus." 

It was pitiful to see his confusion and hear his 
awkward and shamefaced apologies. I was as much 
distressed as he was — especially as he seemed so far 
from having suspected that there was anything im- 
proper in his proposition. So I hastened to console 
him and lead him on to forget his mishap in a con- 
versational orgy about cattle and butchery. We 
were lying at Acapulco, and as we went on deck it 
happened luckily that the crew were just beginning 
to hoist some beeves aboard in slings. Backus's 
melancholy vanished instantly, and with it the 
memory of his late mistake. 

*'Now, only look at that!" cried he. **My good- 
ness, Triangle, what would they say to it in Ohio? 
Wouldn't their eyes bug out to see 'em handled like 
that? — ^wouldn't they, though?" 

All the passengers were on deck to look — even the 
gamblers — and Backus knew them all, and had 
afflicted them all with his pet topic. As I moved 

308 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

away I saw one of the gamblers approach and accost 
him; then another of them; then the third. I 
halted, waited, watched; the conversation continued 
between the four men; it grew earnest; Backus drew 
gradually away; the gamblers followed and kept at 
his elbow. I was imcomfortable. However, as they 
passed me presently, I heard Backus say with a tone 
of persecuted annoyance : 

"But it ain't any use, gentlemen; I tell you again, 
as I've told you a half a dozen times before, I wam't 
raised to it, and I ain't a-going to resk it." 

I felt relieved. "His level head will be his suffi- 
cient protection," I said to myself. 

During the fortnight's nm from Acapulco to San 
Francisco I several times saw the gamblers talking 
earnestly with Backus, and once I threw out a 
gentle warning to him. He chuckled comfortably 
and said: 

"Oh, yes! they tag aroimd after me considerable 
— want me to play a little, just for amusement, they 
say — ^but laws-a-me, if my folks have told me once 
to look out for that sort of live stock, they've told 
me a thousand times, I reckon." 

By and by, in due course, we were approaching 
San Francisco. It was an ugly, black night, with 
a strong wind blowing, but there was not much sea. 
I was on deck alone. Toward ten I started below. 
A figure issued from the gamblers* den and dis- 
appeared in the darkness. I experienced a shock, 
for I was sure it was Backus. I flew down the com- 
panionway, looked about for him, could not find 
him, then returned to the deck just in time to catch 

309 



MARK TWAIN 

a glimpse of him as he re-entered that confounded 
nest of rascality. Had he yielded at last ? I feared 
it. What had he gone below for? His bag of coin? 
Possibly. I drew near the door, full of bodings. 
It was a-crack, and I glanced in and saw a sight that 
made me bitterly wish I had given my attention to 
saving my poor cattle-friend, instead of reading and 
dreaming my foolish time away. He was gambling. 
Worse still, he was being plied with champagne, and 
was already showing some effect from it. He praised 
the ** cider," as he called it, and said now that he 
had got a taste of it he almost believed he would 
drink it if it was spirits, it was so good and so ahead 
of anything he had ever run across before. Sur- 
reptitious smiles at this passed from one rascal to 
another, and they filled all the glasses, and while 
Backus honestly drained his to the bottom they 
pretended to do the same, but threw the wine over 
their shoulders. 

I could not bear the scene, so I wandered forward 
and tried to interest myself in the sea and the voices 
of the wind. But no, my uneasy spirit kept dragging 
me back at quarter-hour intervals, and always I saw 
Backus drinking his wine — fairly and squarely, and 
the others throwing theirs away. It was the pain- 
fulest night I ever spent. 

The only hope I had was that we might reach our 
anchorage with speed — that would break up the 
game. I helped the ship along all I could with my 
prayers. At last we went booming through the 
Golden Gate, and my pulses leaped for joy. I 
hurried back to that door and glanced in. Alas! 

310 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

there was small room for hope — Backus's eyes were 
heavy and bloodshot, his sweaty face was crimson, 
his speech maudHn and thick, his body sawed dnmk- 
enly about with the weaving motion of the ship. 
He drained another glass to the dregs, while the 
cards were being dealt. 

He took his hand, glanced at it, and his dull eyes 
lit up for a moment. The gamblers observed it, and 
showed their gratification by hardly perceptible 
signs. 

**How many cards?** 

**None!" said Backus. 

One villain — named Hank Wiley — discarded one 
card, the others three each. The betting began. 
Heretofore the bets had been trifling — a dollar or 
two; but Backus started off with an eagle now, Wiley 
hesitated a moment, then "saw it," and "went ten 
dollars better." The other two threw up their 
hands. 

Backus went twenty better. Wiley said : 

"I see that, and go you a hundred better!" then 
smiled and reached for the money. 

"Let it alone," said Backus, with drtmken gravity. 

"What ! you mean to say you're going to cover it ?" 

"Cover it? Well, I reckon I am — and lay an- 
other htmdred on top of it, too." 

He reached down inside his overcoat and produced 
the required sum. 

"Oh, that's your little game, is it? I see your 
raise, and raise it five hundred!" said Wiley. 

"Five hundred betterr said the foolish bull-driver, 
and piilled out the amount and showered it on the 

3" 



MARK TWAIN 

pile. The three conspirators hardly tried to conceal 
their extiltation. 

All diplomacy and pretense were dropped now, 
and the sharp exclamations came thick and fast, 
and the yellow pyramid grew higher and higher. 
At last ten thousand dollars lay in view. Wiley cast 
a bag of coin on the table, and said with mocking 
gentleness : 

''Five thousand dollars better, my friend from the 
rural districts — what do you say nowV 

'T call you!" said Backus, heaving his golden shot- 
bag on the pile. ''What have you got?" 

"Four kings, you d d fool!" and Wiley threw 

down his cards and surrounded the stakes with his 
arms. 

"Four aces, you ass!" thundered Backus, covering 
his man with a cocked revolver. "I'm a professional 
gambler myself, and I've been laying for you duffers 
all this voyage!'' 

Down went the anchor, rumbledy-dum-dum I and 
the trip was ended. 

Well, well — it is a sad world. One of the three 
gamblers was Backus's "pal." It was he that dealt 
the fateful hands. According to an understanding 
with the two victims, he was to have given Backus 
four queens, but alas! he didn't. 

A week later I stumbled upon Backus — arrayed 
in the height of fashion — ^in Montgomery street. 
He said cheerily, as we were parting : 

"Ah, by the way, you needn't mind about those 
gores. I don't really know anything about cattle, 
except what I was able to pick up in a week's ap- 

312 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

prenticeship over in Jersey, just before we sailed. 
My cattle culture and cattle enthusiasm have served 
their turn — I sha'n't need them any more." 

Next day we reluctantly parted from the Gold 
Dust and her officers, hoping to see that boat and all 
those officers again, some day. A thing which the 
fates were to render tragically impossible! 



CHAPTER XXXVII 

THE END OF THE "GOLD DUST** 

FOR, three months later, August 8, while I was 
writing one of these foregoing chapters, the 
New York papers brought this telegram : 

"A TERRIBLE DISASTER. 

"seventeen persons killed by an explosion on the 
steamer ' gold dust.' 

"Nashville, August 7. — A despatch from Hick- 
man, Kentucky, says: 

"The steamer Gold Dust exploded her boilers at three o'clock 
to-day, just after leaving Hickman. Forty-seven persons were 
scalded and seventeen are missing. The boat was landed in 
the eddy just above the town, and through the exertions of the 
citizens the cabin passengers, officers, and part of the crew and 
deck passengers were taken ashore and removed to the hotels 
and residences. Twenty-four of the injured were lying in Hol- 
comb's dry-goods store at one time, where they received every 
attention before being removed to more comfortable places." 

A list of the names followed, whereby it appeared 
that of the seventeen dead, one was the barkeeper; 
and among the forty-seven wounded were the cap- 
tain, chief mate, second mate, and second and third 
clerks; also Mr. Lem. Gray, pilot, and several mem- 
bers of the crew. 

314 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

In answer to a private telegram we learned that 
none of these was severely hurt, except Mr. Gray. 
Letters received afterward confirmed this news, and 
said that Mr. Gray was improving and would get 
well. Later letters spoke less hopefully of his case; 
and finally came one announcing his death. A good 
man, a most companionable and manly man, and 
worthy of a kindlier fate. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII 

THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL 

WE took passage in a Cincinnati boat for New 
Orleans; or on a Cincinnati boat — either is 
correct; the former is the Eastern form of put- 
ting it, the latter the Western. 

Mr. Dickens declined to agree that the Missis- 
sippi steamboats were "magnificent," or that they 
were "floating palaces" — terms which had always 
been applied to them; terms which did not over- 
express the admiration with which the people viewed 
them. 

Mr. Dickens's position was unassailable, possibly; 
the people's position was certainly imassailable. If 
Mr. Dickens was comparing these boats with the 
crown jewels; or with the Taj, or with the Matter- 
horn; or with some other priceless or wonderful 
thing which he had seen, they were not magnificent 
— ^he was right. The people compared them with 
what they had seen; and, thus measured, thus judged, 
the boats were magnificent — the term was the correct 
one, it was not at all too strong. The people were 
as right as was Mr. Dickens. The steamboats were 
finer than anything on shore. Compared with supe- 
rior dwelling-houses and first-class hotels in the 
valley, they were indubitably magnificent, they 

316 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

were "palaces." To a few people living in New 
Orleans and St. Louis they were not magnificent, 
perhaps; not palaces; but to the great majority of 
those populations, and to the entire populations 
spread over both banks between Baton Rouge and 
St. Louis, they were palaces; they tallied with the 
citizen's dream of what magnificence was, and sat- 
isfied it. 

Every town and village along that vast stretch 
of double river-frontage had a best dwelHng, finest 
dwelling, mansion — the home of its wealthiest and 
most conspicuous citizen. It is easy to describe it: 
large grassy yard, with paHng fence painted white — 
in fair repair; brick walk from gate to door; big, 
square, two-story "frame" house, painted white and 
porticoed like a Grecian temple — with this difference, 
that the imposing fluted colimins and Corinthian 
capitals were a pathetic sham, being made of white 
pine, and painted; iron knocker; brass door-knob — 
discolored, for lack of polishing. Within, an un- 
carpeted hall, of planed boards; opening out of it, 
a parlor, fifteen feet by fifteen — in some instances 
five or ten feet larger; ingrain carpet; mahogany 
center-table; lamp on it, with green-paper shade — 
standing on a gridiron, so to speak, made of high- 
colored yams, by the young ladies of the house, 
and called a lamp-mat; several books, piled and 
disposed, with cast-iron exactness, according to an 
inherited and unchangeable plan ; among them, Tup- 
per, much penciled; also, Friendship's Offering, and 
Affection's Wreath, with their sappy inanities illus- 
trated in die-away mezzotints; also, Ossian; Alonzo 

317 



MARK TWAIN 

and Melissa, maybe Ivanhoe; also "Album," full of 
original "poetry" of the Thou-hast-woimded-the- 
spirit- that-loved- thee breed; two or three goody- 
goody works — Shepherd of Salisbury Plain, etc.; 
current number of the chaste and innocuous Godey's 
Lady's Book, with painted fashion-plate of wax- 
figure women with mouths all alike — lips and eye- 
lids the same size — each five-foot woman with a 
two-inch wedge sticking from tmder her dress and 
letting on to be half of her foot. Polished air-tight 
stove (new and deadly invention), with pipe passing 
through a board which closes up the discarded good 
old fireplace. On each end of the wooden mantel, 
over the fireplace, a large basket of peaches and 
other fruits, natural size, all done in plaster, rudely, 
or in wax, and painted to resemble the originals — 
which they don't. Over middle of mantel, engraving 
— "Washington Crossing the Delaware " ; on the wall 
by the door, copy of it done in thimder-and-lightning 
crewels by one of the young ladies — work of art 
which would have made Washington hesitate about 
crossing, if he could have foreseen what advantage 
was going to be taken of it. Piano — ^kettle in dis- 
guise — with music, botmd and imbound, piled on it, 
and on a stand near by: "Battle of Prague"; "Bird 
Waltz"; "Arkansas Traveler"; "Rosin the Bow"; 
"Marseillaise Hymn"; "On a Lone Barren Isle" 
(St. Helena); "The Last Link Is Broken"; "She 
Wore a Wreath of Roses the Night When Last We 
Met"; "Go, Forget Me, Why Should Sorrow o'er 
That Brow a Shadow Fling"; "Hotirs That Were 
to Memory Dearer"; "Long, Long Ago"; "Days 

318 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

of Absence"; "A Life on the Ocean Wave, a Home 
on the Rolling Deep"; *'Bird at Sea"; and spread 
open on the rack where the plaintive singer has 
left it, ''Ro-holl on, silver woo-hoon, giiide the irav- 
el-err on his wayy'* etc. Tilted pensively against 
the piano, a guitar — ^guitar capable of playing the 
Spanish fandango by itself, if you give it a start. 
Frantic work of art on the wall — ^pious motto, done 
on the premises, sometimes in colored yams, some- 
times in faded grasses: progenitor of the "God 
Bless Oiu* Home" of modem commerce. Framed 
in black moldings on the wall, other works of art, 
conceived and committed on the premises, by the 
yoimg ladies; being grim black-and-white crayons; 
landscapes, mostly: lake, solitary sailboat, petrified 
clouds, pregeological trees on shore, anthracite preci- 
pice; name of criminal conspicuous in the comer. 
Lithograph, ** Napoleon Crossing the Alps." Litho- 
graph, "The Grave at St. Helena." Steel plates, 
Tmmbull's "Battle of Bunker Hill," and the "SaUy 
from Gibraltar. ' ' Copper plates, ' ' Moses Smiting the 
Rock," and "Return of the Prodigal Son." In big 
gilt frame, slander of the family in oil : papa holding 
a book (" Constitution of the United States"); guitar 
leaning against mamma, blue ribbons fluttering 
from its neck; the young ladies, as children, in slip- 
pers and scalloped pantalettes, one embracing toy 
horse, the other beguiling kitten with ball of yam, 
and both simpering up at mamma, who simpers 
back. These persons all fresh, raw, and red — 
apparently skinned. Opposite, in gilt frame, grand- 
pa and grandma, at thirty and twenty-two, stiff, 

319 



MARK TWAIN 

old-fashioned, high-collared, puff-sleeved, glaring 
pallidly out from a background of soHd Egyptian 
night. Under a glass French clock dome, large 
bouquet of stiff flowers done in corpsy -white wax. 
Pyramidal what-not in the corner, the shelves occu- 
pied chiefly with bric-a-brac of the period, disposed 
with an eye to best effect: shell, with the Lord's 
Prayer carved on it ; another shell — of the long-oval 
sort, narrow, straight orifice, three inches long, run- 
ning from end to end — portrait of Washington carved 
on it; not well done; the shell had Washington's 
mouth, originally — artist should have built to that. 
These tv/o are memorials of the long-ago bridal trip 
to New Orleans and the French Market. Other 
bric-^-brac: Calif omian "specimens" — quartz, with 
gold wart adhering; old Guinea-gold locket, with 
circlet of ancestral hair in it ; Indian arrow-heads, of 
flint ; pair of bead moccasins, from imcle who crossed 
the Plains; three *'alum" baskets of various colors 
— being skeleton-frame of wire, clothed on with 
cubes of crystallized alum in the rock-candy style — 
works of art which were achieved by the young 
ladies; their doubles and duplicates to be found 
upon all what-nots in the land; convention of desic- 
cated bugs and butterflies pinned to a card; painted 
toy dog, seated upon bellows attachment — drops its 
under- jaw and squeaks when pressed upon; sugar- 
candy rabbit — limbs and features merged together, 
not strongly defined; pewter presidential-campaign 
medal; miniature cardboard wood-sawyer, to be 
attached to the stovepipe and operated by the heat ; 
small Napoleon, done in wax ; spread-open daguerreo- 

320 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

types of dim children, parents, cousins, aunts, and 
friends, in all attitudes but customary ones; no 
templed portico at back, and manufactured land- 
scape stretching away in the distance — that came 
in later, with the photograph; all these vague figures 
lavishly chained and ringed — metal indicated and 
secured from doubt by stripes and splashes of vivid 
gold bronze ; all of them too much combed, too much 
fixed up ; and all of them uncomfortable in inflexible 
Sunday clothes of a pattern which the spectator 
cannot realize could ever have been in fashion ; hus- 
band and wife generally grouped together — ^husband 
sitting, wife standing, with hand on his shoiilder — 
and both preserving, all these fading years, some 
traceable effect of the daguerreotypist's brisk ''Now 
smile, if you please!" Bracketed over what-not — 
place of special sacredness — an outrage in water- 
color, done by the young niece that came on a visit 
long ago, and died. Pity, too; for she might have 
repented of this in time. Horsehair chairs, horse- 
hair sofa which keeps sliding from under you. 
Window-shades, of oil stuff, with milkmaids and 
ruined castles stenciled on them in fierce colors. 
Lambrequins dependent from gaudy boxings of 
beaten tin, gilded. Bedrooms with rag carpets ; bed- 
steads of the "corded" sort, with a sag in the mid- 
dle, the cords needing tightening; snuffy feather-bed 
— ^not aired often enough; cane-seat chairs, splint- 
bottomed rocker; looking-glass on wall, school-slate 
size, veneered frame; inherited bureau; wash-bowl 
and pitcher, possibly — but not certainly; brass 
candlestick, tallow candle, snuffers. Nothing else in 

321 



MARK TWAIN 

the room. Not a bathroom in the house; and no 
visitor Hkely to come along who has ever seen one. 
That was the residence of the principal citizen, 
all the way from the suburbs of New Orleans to the 
edge of St. Louis. When he stepped aboard a big 
fine steamboat, he entered a new and marvelous 
world: chimney- tops cut to counterfeit a spraying 
crown of plumes — and maybe painted red; pilot- 
house, hurricane-deck, boiler-deck guards, all gar- 
nished with white wooden filigree-work of fanciful 
patterns; gilt acorns topping the derricks; gilt deer- 
horns over the big bell; gaudy symbolical picture on 
the paddle-box, possibly; big roomy boiler -deck, 
painted blue, and furnished with Windsor arm- 
chairs; inside, a far-receding snow-white ** cabin"; 
porcelain knob and oil-picture on every stateroom 
door; curving patterns of filigree-work touched up 
with gilding, stretching overhead all down the con- 
verging vista; big chandeliers every little way, each 
an April shower of glittering glass-drops; lovely 
rainbow-light falling everywhere from the colored 
glazing of the skylights; the whole a long-drawn, 
resplendent tunnel, a bewildering and soul-satisfying 
spectacle! in the ladies* cabin a pink and white 
Wilton carpet, as soft as mush, and glorified with a 
ravishing pattern of gigantic flowers. Then the 
Bridal Chamber — the animal that invented that 
idea was still ahve and unhanged, at that day — 
Bridal Chamber whose pretentious flummery was 
necessarily overawing to the now tottering intellect 
of that hosannahing citizen. Every stateroom had 
its couple of cozy clean bunks, and perhaps a 

322 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

looking-glass and a snug closet ; and sometimes there 
was even a wash-bowl and pitcher, and part of a 
towel which could be told from mosquito-netting by 
an expert — though generally these things were ab- 
sent, and the shirt-sleeved passengers cleansed 
themselves at a long row of stationary bowls in the 
barber shop, where were also public towels, public 
combs, and public soap. 

Take the steamboat which I have just described, 
and you have her in her highest and finest, and 
most pleasing, and comfortable, and satisfactory 
estate. Now cake her over with a layer of ancient 
and obdurate dirt, and you have the Cincinnati 
steamer awhile ago referred to. Not all over — only 
inside; for she was ably officered in all departments 
except the steward's. 

But wash that boat and repaint her, and she 
would be about the counterpart of the most com- 
plimented boat of the old flush times : for the steam- 
boat architecture of the West has imdergone no 
change; neither has steamboat furniture and orna- 
mentation imdergone any. 



CHAPTER XXXIX 

MANUFACTURES AND MISCREANTS 

WHERE the river, in the Vicksburg region, used 
to be corkscrewed, it is now comparatively- 
straight — made so by cut-off; a former distance of 
seventy miles is reduced to thirty -five. It is a 
change which threw Vicksburg's neighbor, Delta, 
Louisiana, out into the country and ended its career 
as a river town. Its whole river-frontage is now 
occupied by a vast sand-bar, thickly covered with 
young trees — a growth which will magnify itself 
into a dense forest, by and by, and completely hide 
the exiled town. 

In due time we passed Grand Gulf and Rodney, 
of war fame, and reached Natchez, the last of the 
beautiful hill-cities — for Baton Rouge, yet to come, 
is not on a hill, but only on high ground. Famous 
Natchez-under-the-hill has not changed notably in 
twenty years; in outward aspect — ^judging by the 
descriptions of the ancient procession of foreign 
tourists — ^it has not changed in sixty; for it is still 
small, straggling, and shabby. It had a desperate 
reputation, morally, in the old keelboating and 
early steamboating times — plenty of drinking, car- 
rousing, fisticuffing, and killing there, among the 
riffraff of the river, in those days. But Natchez- 

324 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

on-top-of-the-hill is attractive; has always been 
attractive. Even Mrs. TroUope (1827) had to 
confess its charms: 

At one or two points the wearisome level line is relieved by 
blufs, as they call the short intervals of high ground. The town 
of Natchez is beautifully situated on one of those high spots. 
The contrast that its bright green hill forms with the dismal 
line of black forest that stretches on every side, the abundant 
growth of the pawpaw, palmetto, and orange, the copious 
variety of sweet-scented flowers that flourish there, all make 
it appear like an oasis in the desert. Natchez is the furthest 
point to the north at which oranges ripen in the open air, or 
endure the winter without shelter. With the exception of this 
sweet spot, I thought all the little towns and villages we passed 
wretched-looking in the extreme. 

Natchez, like her near and far river neighbors, 
has railways now, and is adding to them — pushing 
them hither and thither into all rich outlying regions 
that are naturally tributary to her. And like Vicks- 
burg and New Orleans, she has her ice factory; she 
makes thirty tons of ice a day. In Vicksburg and 
Natchez, in my time, ice was jewelry; none but the 
rich could wear it. But anybody and everybody can 
have it now. I visited one of the ice factories in 
New Orleans, to see what the polar regions might 
look like when lugged into the edge of the tropics. 
But there was nothing striking in the aspect of the 
place. It was merely a spacious house, with some 
innocent steam machinery in one end of it and some 
big porcelain pipes nmning here and there. No, not 
porcelain — they merely seemed to be; they were 
iron, but the ammonia which was being breathed 
through them had coated them to the thickness of 

325 



MARK TWAIN 

your hand with solid milk-white ice. It ought to 
have melted ; for one did not require winter clothing 
in that atmosphere: but it did not melt; the inside 
of the pipe was too cold. 

Sunk into the floor were numberless tin boxes, a 
foot square and two feet long, and open at the top 
end. These were full of clear water; and around 
each box, salt and other proper stuff was packed; 
also, the ammonia gases were appHed to the water 
in some way which will always remain a secret to 
me, because I was not able to imderstand the process. 
While the water in the boxes gradually froze, men 
gave it a stir or two with a stick occasionally — to 
Hberate the air-bubbles, I think. Other men were 
continually lifting out boxes whose contents had 
become hard frozen. They gave the box a single dip 
into a vat of boiling water, to melt the block of ice 
free from its tin coffin, then they shot the block out 
upon a platform car, and it was ready for market. 
These big blocks were hard, soHd, and crystal-clear. 
In certain of them, big bouquets of fresh and brilliant 
tropical flowers had been frozen in ; in others, beau- 
tiful silken-clad French dolls, and other pretty 
objects. These blocks were to be set on end in a 
platter, in the center of dinner- tables, to cool the 
tropical air; and also to be ornamental, for the 
flowers and things imprisoned in them could be 
seen as through plate glass. I was told that this 
factory could retail its ice, by wagon, throughout 
New Orleans, in the humblest dwelling-house quan- 
tities, at six or seven dollars a ton, and make a suffi- 
cient profit. This being the case, there is business. 

326 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

for ice factories in the North; for we get ice on no 
such terms there, if one take less than three hundred 
and fifty pounds at a delivery. 

The Rosalie Yam Mill, of Natchez, has a capacity 
of 6,000 spindles and 160 looms, and employs 100 
hands. The Natchez Cotton Mills Company began 
operations four years ago in a two-story btdlding of 
50 X 190 feet, with 4,000 spindles and 128 looms; 
capital $105,000, all subscribed in the town. Two 
years later, the same stockholders increased their 
capital to $225,000; added a third story to the mill, 
increased its length to 317 feet; added machinery 
to increase the capacity to 10,300 spindles and 
304 looms. The company now employ 250 opera- 
tives, many of whom are citizens of Natchez. **The 
mill works 5,000 bales of cotton annually and manu- 
factures the best standard quality of brown shirtings 
and sheetings and drills, turning out 5,000,000 yards 
of these goods per year."^ A close corporation — 
stock held at $5,000 per share, but none in the 
market. 

The changes in the Mississippi River are great 
and strange, yet were to be expected; but I was not 
expecting to live to see Natchez and these other 
river towns become manufacturing strongholds and 
railway-centers. 

Speaking of manufactures reminds me of a talk 
upon that topic which I heard — which I overheard — 
on board the Cincinnati boat. I awoke out of a 
fretted sleep, with a dull confusion of voices in my 
ears. I listened — two men were talking; subject, 
* New Orleans Times-Democrat, August 26, 1882. 
327 



MARK TWAIN 

apparently, the great inundation. I looked out 
through the open transom. The two men were 
eating a late breakfast; sitting opposite each other; 
nobody else around. They closed up the inundation 
with a few words — having used it, evidently, as a 
mere ice-breaker and acquaintanceship-breeder — 
then they dropped into business. It soon transpired 
that they were drummers — one belonging in Cin- 
cinnati, the other in New Orleans. Brisk men, 
energetic of movement and speech; the dollar their 
god, how to get it their religion. 

"Now as to this article," said Cincinnati, slashing 
into the ostensible butter and holding forward a 
slab of it on his knife-blade, ''it's from our house; 
look at it — smell of it — taste it. Put any test on 
it you want to. Take your own time — ^no hurry — 
make it thorough. There now — what do you say? 
butter, ain't it? Not by a thimdering sight — it's 
oleomargarine! Yes, sir, that's what it is — oleo- 
margarine. You can't tell it from butter ; by George, 
an expert can't! It's from our house. We supply 
most of the boats in the West; there's hardly a 
poimd of butter on one of them. We are crawling 
right along — jumping right along is the word. We 
are going to have that entire trade. Yes, and the 
hotel trade, too. You are going to see the day, 
pretty soon, when you can't find an ounce of butter 
to bless yourself with, in any hotel in the Missis- 
sippi and Ohio valleys, outside of the biggest cities. 
Why, we are turning out oleomargarine now by the 
thousands of tons. And we can sell it so dirt-cheap 
that the whole country has got to take it — can't get 

328 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

around it, you see. Butter don't stand any show — 
there ain't any chance for competition. Butter's 
had its day — and from this out, butter goes to the 
wall. There's more money in oleomargarine than 
— why, you can't imagine the business we do. I've 
stopped in every town, from Cincinnati to Natchez; 
and I've sent home big orders from every one of 
them." 

And so forth and so on, for ten minutes longer, 
in the same fervid strain. Then New Orleans piped 
up and said: 

"Yes, it's a first-rate imitation, that's a cer- 
tainty; but it ain't the only one around that's first- 
rate. For instance, they make olive-oil out of 
cotton-seed oil, nowadays, so that you can't tell 
them apart." 

"Yes, that's so,'* responded Cincinnati, "and it 
was a tip- top business for a while. They sent it over 
and brought it back from France and Italy, with the 
United States custom-house mark on it to indorse it 
for genuine, and there was no end of cash in it; but 
France and Italy broke up the game — of course they 
naturally would. Cracked on such a rattling impost 
that cotton-seed olive-oil couldn't stand the raise; 
had to hang up and quit." 

"Oh, it did, did it? You wait here a minute." 

Goes to his stateroom, brings back a couple of 
long bottles, and takes out the corks — says: 

"There now, smell them, taste them, examine the 
bottles, inspect the labels. One of 'm's from 
Europe, the other's never been out of this country. 
One's European olive-oil, the other's American 

329 



MARK TWAIN 

cotton-seed olive-oil. Tell 'm apart? 'Course you 
can't. Nobody can. People that want to, can go 
to the expense and trouble of shipping their oils to 
Europe and back — ^it's their privilege; but our firm 
knows a trick worth six of that. We turn out the 
whole thing — clean from the word go — ^in our factory 
in New Orleans: labels, bottles, oil, everything. 
Well, no, not labels: been buying them abroad — get 
them dirt-cheap there. You see there's just one 
little wee speck, essence, or whatever it is, in a gallon 
of cotton-seed oil, that gives it a smell, or a flavor, 
or something — get that out, and you're all right — 
perfectly easy then to turn the oil into any kind of 
oil you want to, and there ain't anybody that can 
detect the true from the false. Well, we know how 
to get that one little particle out — and we're the 
only firm that does. And we turn out an olive-oil 
that is just simply perfect — ^undetectable! We are 
doing a ripping trade, too — as I could easily show 
you by my order-book for this trip. Maybe you'll 
butter everybody's bread pretty soon, but we'll 
cotton-seed his salad for him from the Gulf to 
Canada, that's a dead-certain thing." 

Cincinnati glowed and flashed with admiration. 
The two scoundrels exchanged business-cards, and 
arose. As they left the table, Cincinnati said: 

**But you have to have custom-house marks, 
don't you? How do you manage that?" 

I did not catch the answer. 

We passed Port Hudson, scene of two of the 
most terrific episodes of the war — ^the night battle 
there between Farragut's fleet and the Confederate 

330 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

land batteries, April 14, 1863; and the memorable 
land battle, two months later, which lasted eight 
hours — eight hours of exceptionally fierce and stub- 
bom fighting — and ended, finally, in the repulse of 
the Union forces with great slaughter. 



CHAPTER XL 

CASTLES AND CULTURE 

BATON ROUGE was clothed in flowers, like a 
bride — no, much more so; like a greenhouse. 
For we were in the absolute South now — ^no modifi- 
cations, no compromises, no half-way measures. 
The magnolia trees in the Capitol grounds were 
lovely and fragrant, with their dense rich foliage and 
huge snowball blossoms. The scent of the flower is 
very sweet, but you want distance on it, because 
it is so powerful. They are not good bedroom 
blossoms — they might suffocate one in his sleep. 
We were certainly in the South at last ; for here the 
sugar region begins, and the plantations — vast green 
levels, with sugar-mill and negro quarters clustered 
together in the middle distance — were in view. And 
there was a tropical sim overhead and a tropical 
swelter in the air. 

And at this point, also, begins the pilot *s paradise : 
a wide river hence to New Orleans, abundance of 
water from shore to shore, and no bars, snags, 
sawyers, or wrecks in his road. 

Sir Walter Scott is probably responsible for the 
Capitol building; for it is not conceivable that this 
little sham castle would ever have been built if he 
had not run the people mad, a couple of generations 

332 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

ago, with his medieval romances. The South has 
not yet recovered from the debiHtating influence of 
his books. Admiration of his fantastic heroes and 
their grotesque ''chivalry" doings and romantic 
juvenilities still survives here, in an atmosphere in 
which is already perceptible the wholesome and 
practical nineteenth-century smell of cotton factories 
and locomotives; and traces of its inflated language 
and other windy humbuggeries survive along with 
it. It is pathetic enough that a whitewashed castle, 
with turrets and things — materials all ungenuine 
within and without, pretending to be what they are 
not — should ever have been built in this otherwise 
honorable place; but it is much more pathetic to see 
this architectural falsehood undergoing restoration 
and perpetuation in our day, when it would have 
been so easy to let dynamite finish what a chari- 
table fire began, and then devote this restoration 
money to the building of something genuine. 

Baton Rouge has no patent on imitation castles, 
however, and no monopoly of them. The following 
remark is from the advertisement of the "Female 
Institute" of Columbia, Tennessee: 

The Institute building has long been famed as a model of 
striking and beautiful architecture. Visitors are charmed with 
its resemblance to the old castles of song and story, with its 
towers, turreted walls, and ivy-mantled porches. 

Keeping school in a castle is a romantic thing; as 
romantic as keeping hotel in a castle. 

By itself the imitation castle is doubtless harm- 
less, and well enough; but as a symbol and breeder 

333 



MARK TWAIN 

and sustainer of maudlin Middle-Age romanticism 
here in the midst of the plainest and sturdiest and 
infinitely greatest and worthiest of all the centuries 
the world has seen, it is necessarily a hurtful thing 
and a mistake. 

Here is an extract from the prospectus of a Ken- 
tucky "Female College." Female college sounds 
well enough; but since the phrasing it in that un- 
justifiable way was done purely in the interest of 
brevity, it seems to me that she-college would have 
been still better — because shorter, and means the 
same thing : that is, if either phrase means anything 
at all: 

The president is Southern by birth, by rearing, by education, 
and by sentiment; the teachers are all Southern in sentiment, 
and with the exception of those born in Europe were bom and 
raised in the South. Believing the Southern to be the highest 
type of civilization this continent has seen,* the young ladies 

* Illustrations of it thoughtlessly omitted by the advertiser: 
"Knoxville, Tennessee, October 19. — This morning, a few min- 
utes after ten o'clock. General Joseph A. Mabry, Thomas O'Connor, 
and Joseph A. Mabry, Jr., were killed in a shooting affray. The diffi- 
culty began yesterday afternoon by General Mabry attacking Major 
O'Connor and threatening to kill him. This was at the fair-grounds, 
and O'Connor told Mabry that it was not the place to settle their 
difficulties. Mabry then told O'Connor he should not live. It 
seems that Mabry was armed and O'Connor was not. The cause 
of the difficulty was an old feud about the transfer of some property 
from Mabry to O'Connor. Later in the afternoon Mabry sent word 
to O'Connor that he would kill him on sight. This morning Major 
O'Connor was standing in the door of the Mechanics' National 
Bank, of which he was president. General Mabry and another 
gentleman walked down Gay Street on the opposite side from the 
bank. O'Connor stepped into the bank, got a shotgun, took de- 
liberate aim at General Mabry and fired. Mabry fell dead, being 
shot in the left side. As he fell O'Connor fired again, the shot 
taking effect in Mabry 's thigh. O'Connor then reached into the 

334 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

are trained according to the Southern ideas of delicacy, refine- 
ment, womanhood, rehgion, and propriety; hence we offer a 
first-class female college for the South and solicit Southern 
patronage. 

What, warder, ho ! the man that can blow so com- 
placent a blast as that, probably blows it from a castle. 

From Baton Rouge to New Orleans, the great 
sugar-plantations border both sides of the river all 

bank and got another shotgun. About this time, Joseph A. Mabry, 
Jr., son of General Mabry, came rushing down the street, imseen 
by O'Connor imtil within forty feet, when the young man fired a 
pistol, the shot taking effect in O'Connor's right breast, passing 
through the body near the heart. The instant Mabry shot, O'Con- 
nor turned and fired, the load taking effect in young Mabry's right 
breast and side. Mabry fell, pierced with twenty buckshot, and 
almost instantly O'Connor fell dead without a struggle. Mabry 
tried to rise, but fell back dead. The whole tragedy occurred within 
two minutes, and neither of the three spoke after he was shot. 
General Mabry had about thirty buckshot in his body. A by- 
stander was painfully wounded in the thigh with a buckshot, and 
another was wounded in the arm. Four other men had their clothing 
pierced by buckshot. The affair caused great excitement, and 
Gay Street was thronged with thousands of people. General Mabry 
and his son Joe were acquitted only a few days ago of the murder 
of Moses Lusby and Don Lusby, father and son, whom they killed 
a few weeks ago. Will Mabry was killed by Don Lusby last Christ- 
mas. Major Thomas O'Connor was President of the Mechanics' 
National Bank here, and the wealthiest man in the State." — 
Associated Press Telegram. 

" One day last month Professor Sharpe of the Somerville, Tennes- 
see Female College, 'a quiet and gentlemanly man,' was told that 
his brother-in-law, a Captain Burton, had threatened to kill him. 
Burton, it seems, had already killed one man and driven his knife 
into another. The professor armed himself with a double-barreled 
shotgun, started out in search of his brother-in-law, found him 
playing billiards in a saloon, and blew his brains out. The Memphis 
Avalanche reports that the professor's course met with pretty general 
approval in the commimity; knowing that the law was powerless, 
in the actual condition of public sentiment, to protect him, he 
protected himself. 

** About the same time, two young men in North Carolina quarreled 

335 



MARK TWAIN 

the way, and stretch their league-wide levels back 
to the dim forest walls of bearded cypress in the 
rear. Shores lonely no longer. Plenty of dwellings 
all the way, on both banks — standing so close to- 
gether, for long distances, that the broad river 
lying between the two rows becomes a sort of spa- 
cious street. A most homelike and happy -looking 
region. And now and then you see a pillared and 
porticoed great manor-house, embowered in trees. 
Here is testimony of one or two of the procession 
of foreign tourists that filed along here half a century 
ago. Mrs. Trollope says: 

The unbroken flatness of the banks of the Mississippi con- 
tinued unvaried for many miles above New Orleans; but the 
graceful and luxuriant palmetto, the dark and noble ilex, and the 
bright orange were everywhere to be seen, and it was many 
days before we were weary of looking at them. 



about a girl, and 'hostile messages' were exchanged. Friends tried 
to reconcile them, but had their labor for their pains. On the 24th 
the young men met in the public highway. One of them had a 
heavy club in his hand, the other an ax. The man with the club 
fought desperately for his life, but it was a hopeless fight from the 
first. A well-directed blow sent his club whirling out of his grasp, 
and the next moment he was a dead man. 

"About the same time, two 'highly connected' young Virginians, 
clerks in a hardware store at Charlottesville, while 'skylarking,' 
came to blows. Peter Dick threw pepper in Charles Roads's eyes; 
Roads demanded an apology; Dick refused to give it, and it was 
agreed that a duel was inevitable, but a difficulty arose; the parties 
had no pistols, and it was too late at night to procure them. One 
of them suggested that butcher-knives would answer the purpose, 
and the other accepted the suggestion; the result was that Roads 
fell to the floor with a gash in his abdomen that may or may not 
prove fatal. If Dick has been arrested, the news has not reached 
us. He 'expressed deep regret,' and we are told by a Staunton 
correspondent of the Philadelphia Press that ' every effort has been 
made to hush the matter up.* " — Extracts from the Public Journals. 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

Captain Basil Hall : 

The district of country which lies adjacent to the Mississippi, 
in the lower parts of Louisiana, is everywhere thickly peopled 
by sugar-planters, whose showy houses, gray piazzas, trig gar- 
dens, and numerous slave villages, all clean and neat, gave an 
exceedingly thriving air to the river scenery. 

All the procession paint the attractive picture in 
the same way. The descriptions of fifty years ago 
do not need to have a word changed in order to 
exactly describe the same region as it appears to-day 
— except as to the "trigness" of the houses. The 
whitewash is gone from the negro cabins now; and 
many, possibly most, of the big mansions, once so 
shining white, have worn out their paint and have 
a decayed, neglected look. It is the blight of the 
war. Twenty-one years ago everything was trim 
and trig and bright along the "coast," just as it 
had been in 1827, as described by those tourists. 

Unfortunate tourists! People humbugged them 
with stupid and silly lies, and then laughed at them 
for believing and printing the same. They told 
Mrs. TroUope that the alligators — or crocodiles, as 
she calls them — were terrible creatures; and backed 
up the statement with a blood-curdling account of 
how one of these slandered reptiles crept into a 
squatter cabin one night, and ate up a woman and 
five children. The woman, by herself, would have 
satisfied any ordinarily impossible alligator; but no, 
these liars must make him gorge the five children 
besides. One would not imagine that jokers of this 
robust breed would be sensitive — but they were. It 
is difficult, at this day, to understand, and impossi- 

337 



MARK TWAIN 

ble to justify, the reception which the book of the 
grave, honest, intelligent, gentle, manly, charitable, 
well-meaning Captain Basil Hall got. Mrs. Trol- 
lope's account of it may perhaps entertain the 
reader: therefore, I have put it in the Appendix.^ 

*See Appendix C. 



CHAPTER XLI 

THE METROPOLIS OF THE SOUTH 

THE approaches to New Orleans were familiar; 
general aspects were unchanged. When one 
goes flying through London along a railway propped 
in the air on tall arches, he may inspect miles of 
upper bedrooms through the open windows, but the 
lower half of the houses is under his level and out 
of sight. Similarly, in high-river stage, in the New 
Orleans region, the water is up to the top of the 
inclosing levee-rim, the flat country behind it lies 
low — ^representing the bottom of a dish — and as the 
boat swims along, high on the flood, one looks down 
upon the houses and into the upper windows. There 
is nothing but that frail breastwork of earth between 
the people and destruction. 

The old brick salt-warehouses clustered at the 
upper end of the city looked as they had always 
looked: warehouses which had had a kind of Alad- 
din's lamp experience, however, since I had seen 
them; for when the war broke out the proprietor 
went to bed one night leaving them packed with 
thousands of sacks of vulgar salt, worth a couple of 
dollars a sack, and got up in the morning and found 
his moimtain of salt turned into a mountain of 
gold, so to speak, so suddenly and to so dizzy a 

339 



MARK TWAIN 

height had the war news sent up the price of the 
article. 

The vast reach of plank wharves remained un- 
changed, and there were as many ships as ever: but 
the long array of steamboats had vanished; not 
altogether, of course, but not much of it was left. 

The city itself had not changed — to the eye. It 
had greatly increased in spread and population, but 
the look of the town was not altered. The dust, 
waste-paper-littered, was still deep in the streets ; the 
deep troughlike gutters along the curbstones were 
still half full of reposeful water with a dusty surface ; 
the sidewalks were still — in the sugar and bacon 
region — encumbered by casks and barrels and hogs- 
heads ; the great blocks of austerely plain commercial 
houses were as dusty-looking as ever. 

Canal Street was finer and more attractive and 
stirring than formerly, with its drifting crowds of 
people, its several processions of hurrying street-cars, 
and — toward evening — its broad second-story ver- 
andas crowded with gentlemen and ladies clothed 
according to the latest mode. 

Not that there is any "architecture" in Canal 
Street: to speak in broad, general terms, there is 
no architecture in New Orleans, except in the ceme- 
teries. It seems a strange thing to say of a wealthy, 
far-seeing, and energetic city of a quarter of a milhon 
inhabitants, but it is true. There is a huge granite 
United States custom-house — costly enough, genuine 
enough, but as to decoration it is inferior to a gas- 
ometer. It looks like a state prison. But it was 
built before the war. Architecture in America may 

340 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI • 

be said to have been bom since the war. New 
Orleans, I believe, has had the good luck — and in a 
sense the bad luck — to have had no great fire in late 
years. It must be so. If the opposite had been the 
case, I think one would be able to tell the ** burnt 
district" by the radical improvement in its archi- 
tecture over the old forms. One can do this in 
Boston and Chicago. The "burnt district" of Bos- 
ton was commonplace before the fire ; but now there 
is no commercial district in any city in the world 
that can surpass it — or perhaps even rival it — ^in 
beauty, elegance, and tastefulness. 

However, New Orleans has begun — just this mo- 
ment, as one may say. When completed, the new Cot- 
ton Exchange will be a stately and beautiful building : 
massive, substantial, full of architectural graces; no 
shams or false pretenses or uglinesses about it any- 
where. To the city it will be worth many times its 
cost, for it will breed its species. What has been lack- 
ing hitherto was a model to build toward, something 
to educate eye and taste : a suggester, so to speak. 

The city is well outfitted with progressive men — 
thinking, sagacious, long-headed men. The con- 
trast between the spirit of the city and the city's 
architecture is like the contrast between waking and 
sleep. Apparently there is a "boom" in everything 
but that one dead feature. The water in the gutters 
used to be stagnant and slimy, and a potent disease- 
breeder; but the gutters are flushed now two or three 
times a day by powerful machinery; in many of the 
gutters the water never stands still, but has a steady 
current. Other sanitary improvements have been 

341 



MARK TWAIN 

made ; and with such effect that New Orleans claims 
to be (during the long intervals between the occasion- 
al yellow-fever assaults) one of the healthiest cities 
in the Union. There's plenty of ice now for every- 
body, manufactured in the town. It is a driving 
place commercially, and has a great river, ocean, 
and railway business. At the date of our visit it 
was the best-lighted city in the Union, electrically 
speaking. The New Orleans electric lights were 
more numerous than those of New York, and very 
much better. One had this modified noonday not 
only in Canal and some neighboring chief streets, 
but all along a stretch of five miles of river-frontage. 
There are good clubs in the city now — several of 
them but recently organized — and inviting modem- 
style pleasure resorts at West End and Spanish Fort. 
The telephone is everywhere. One of the most 
notable advances is in journalism. The news- 
papers, as I remember them, were not a striking 
feature. Now they are. Money is spent upon them 
with a free hand. They get the news, let it cost 
what it may. The editorial work is not hack-grind- 
ing, but literature. As an example of New Orleans 
journalistic achievement, it may be mentioned that 
the Times-Democrat of August 26, 1882, contained 
a report of the year's business of the towns of the 
Mississippi valley, from New Orleans all the way 
to St. Paul — two thousand miles. That issue of the 
paper consisted of forty pages ; seven coltimns to the 
page; two hundred and eighty columns in all; fifteen 
hundred words to the column; an aggregate of four 
hundred and twenty thousand words. That is to 

342 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

say, not much short of three times as many words 
as are in this book. One may with sorrow contrast 
this with the architecture of New Orleans. 

I have been speaking of public architecture only. 
The domestic article in New Orleans is reproachless, 
notwithstanding it remains as it always was. All 
the dwellings are of wood — ^in the American part of 
the town, I mean — and all have a comfortable look. 
Those in the wealthy quarter are spacious; painted 
snow-white usually, and generally have wide ver- 
andas, or double verandas, supported by ornamental 
columns. These mansions stand in the center of 
large grounds, and rise, garlanded with roses, out 
of the midst of swelling masses of shining green 
foliage and many-colored blossoms. No houses 
could well be in better harmony with their surround- 
ings, or more pleasing to the eye, or more homelike 
and comfortable-looking. 

One even becomes reconciled to the cistern pres- 
ently; this is a mighty cask, painted green, and 
sometimes a couple of stories high, which is propped 
against the house-comer on stilts. There is a 
mansion-and-brewery suggestion about the combina- 
tion which seems very incongruous at first. But the 
people cannot have wells, and so they take rain- 
water. Neither can they conveniently have cellars 
or graves,* the town being built upon *'made'* 
ground; so they do without both, and few of the 
living complain, and none of the others. 

* The Israelites are buried in graves — ^by permission, I take it, not 
requirement; but none else, except the destitute, who are buried at 
public expense. The graves are but three or four feet deep. 

343 



CHAPTER XLII 

HYGIENE AND SENTIMENT 

THEY bury their dead in vaults, above the 
ground. These vaults have a resemblance to 
houses — sometimes to temples; are built of marble, 
generally; are architecturally graceful and shapely; 
they face the walks and driveways of the cemetery; 
and when one moves through the midst of a thousand 
or so of them, and sees their white roofs and gables 
stretching into the distance on every hand, the phrase 
**city of the dead" has all at once a meaning to him. 
Many of the cemeteries are beautiful and are kept 
in perfect order. When one goes from the levee or 
the business streets near it, to a cemetery, he ob- 
serves to himself that if those people down there 
would live as neatly while they are alive as they do 
after they are dead, they would find many advan- 
tages in it; and besides, their quarter would be the 
wonder and admiration of the business world. Fresh 
flowers, in vases of water, are to be seen at the 
portals of many of the vaults: placed there by the 
pious hands of bereaved parents and children, hus- 
bands and wives, and renewed daily. A milder form 
of sorrow finds its inexpensive and lasting remem- 
brancer in the coarse and ugly but indestructible 
** immortelle" — which is a wreath or cross or some 

344 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

such emblem, made of rosettes of black linen, with 
sometimes a yellow rosette at the junction of the 
cross's bars — ^kind of sorrowful breastpin, so to say. 
The immortelle requires no attention : you just hang 
it up, and there you are; just leave it alone, it will 
take care of your grief for you, and keep it in mind 
better than you can; stands weather first-rate, and 
lasts like boiler-iron. 

On sunny days, pretty little chameleons — ^grace- 
fulest of legged reptiles — creep along the marble 
fronts of the vaults, and catch flies. Their changes 
of color — as to variety — are not up to the creature's 
reputation. They change color when a person 
comes along and hangs up an immortelle; but that 
is nothing: any right-feeling reptile would do that. 

I will gradually drop this subject of graveyards. 
I have been trying all I could to get down to the 
sentimental part of it, but I cannot accomplish it. 
I think there is no genuinely sentimental part to it. 
It is all grotesque, ghastly, horrible. Graveyards 
may have been justifiable in the bygone ages, when 
nobody knew that for every dead body put into 
the ground, to glut the earth and the plant-roots and 
the air with disease-germs, five or fifty, or maybe a 
hundred, persons must die before their proper time; 
but they are hardly justifiable now, when even the 
children know that a dead saint enters upon a 
century -long career of assassination the moment the 
earth closes over his corpse. It is a grim sort of a 
thought. The relics of St. Anne, up in Canada, have 
now, after nineteen hundred years, gone to curing 
the sick by the dozen. But it is merest matter-of- 

345 



MARK TWAIN 

course that these same reHcs, within a generation 
after St. Anne's death and burial, made several thou- 
sand people sick. Therefore these miracle-perform- 
ances are simply compensation, nothing more. St. 
Anne is somewhat slow pay, for a Saint, it is true; 
but better a debt paid after nineteen hundred years, 
and outlawed by the statute of Hmitations, than not 
paid at all; and most of the knights of the halo do 
not pay at all. Where you find one that pays — like 
St. Anne — you find a hundred and fifty that take 
the benefit of the statute. And none of them pay 
any more than the principal of what they owe — they 
pay none of the interest either simple or compound. 
A Saint can never quite return the principal, how- 
ever, for his dead body kills people, whereas his relics 
heal only — they never restore the dead to life. That 
part of the accoimt is always left unsettled. 

Dr. F. Julius Le Moyne, after fifty years of medical practice, 
wrote: "The inhumation of human bodies, dead from infectious 
diseases, results in constantly loading the atmosphere, and 
polluting the waters, with not only the germs that rise from 
simply putrefaction, but also with the specific germs of the 
diseases from which death resulted." 

The gases (from buried corpses) will rise to the surface through 
eight or ten feet of gravel, just as coal-gas will do, and there is 
practically no limit to their power of escape. 

During the epidemic in New Orleans in 1853, Dr. E. H. Barton 
reported that in the Fourth District the mortality was four 
hundred and fifty-two per thousand— more than double that of 
any other. In this district were three large cemeteries, in which 
during the previous year more than three thousand bodies had 
been buried. In other districts the proximity of cemeteries 
seemed to aggravate the disease. 

In 1828 Professor Bianchi demonstrated how the fearful re- 
appearance of the plague at Modena was caused by excavations 

346 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

in ground where, three hundred years previously, the victims of 
the pestilence had been buried. Mr. Cooper, in explaining the 
causes of some epidemics, remarks that the opening of the plague 
burial-grounds at Eyam resulted in an immediate outbreak of 
disease. — North American Review, No. j, Vol. 135. 

In an address before the Chicago Medical Society, 
in advocacy of cremation, Dr. Charles W. Purdy 
made some striking comparisons to show what a 
burden is laid upon society by the burial of the dead : 

One and one-fourth times more money is expended annually 
in funerals in the United States than the government expends 
for public-school purposes. Funerals cost this country in 1880 
enough money to pay the liabilities of all the commercial failures 
in the United States during the same year, and give each bank- 
rupt a capital of eight thousand six hundred and thirty dollars 
with which to resume business. Funerals cost annually more 
money than the value of the combined gold and silver yield of 
the United States in the year 1880. These figures do not include 
the sums invested in burial-grounds and expended in tombs and 
monuments, nor the loss from depreciation of property in the 
vicinity of cemeteries. 

For the rich, cremation would answer as well as 
burial; for the ceremonies connected with it could 
be made as costly and ostentatious as a Hindu suttee; 
while for the poor, cremation would be better than 
burial, because so cheapo — so cheap imtil the poor 
got to imitating the rich, which they would do by 
and by. The adoption of cremation would relieve 
us of a muck of threadbare biuial witticisms; but, 
on the other hand, it would resurrect a lot of mil- 
dewed old cremation jokes that have had a rest for 
two thousand years. 

I have a colored acquaintance who earns his living 
* Four or five dollars is the minimum cost. 
347 



MARK TWAIN 

by odd jobs and heavy manual labor. He never 
earns above four hundred dollars in a year, and as 
he has a wife and several young children, the closest 
scrimping is necessary to get him through to the end 
of the twelve months debtless. To such a man a 
funeral is a colossal financial disaster. While I was 
writing one of the preceding chapters, this man lost 
a little child. He walked the town over with a 
friend, trying to find a cofHn that was within his 
means. He bought the very cheapest one he could 
find, plain wood, stained. It cost him twenty-six 
dollars. It would have cost less than four, probabty, 
if it had been built to put something useful into. 
He and his family will feel that outlay a good many 
months. 



CHAPTER XLIII 

THE ART OF INHUMATION 

ABOUT the same time I encoimtered a man in 
i\ the street whom I had not seen for six or seven 
years ; and something like this talk followed. I said : 

''But you used to look sad and oldish; you don't 
now. Where did you get all this youth and bubbling 
cheerfulness? Give me the address." 

He chuckled blithely, took off his shining tile, 
pointed to a notched pink circlet of paper pasted into 
its crown, with something lettered on it, and went 
on chuckling while I read, "J. B., Undertaker." 
Then he clapped his hat on, gave it an irreverent 
tilt to leeward, and cried out : 

"That's what's the matter! It used to be rough 
times with me when you knew me — instuance-agency 
business, you know; mighty irregular. Big fire, all 
right — brisk trade for ten days while people scared; 
after that, dull policy business till next fire. Town 
like this don't have fires often enough — a fellow 
strikes so many dull weeks in a row that he gets 
discouraged. But you bet you, this is the business! 
People don't wait for examples to die. No, sir, they 
drop off right along — there ain't any dull spots in 
the undertaker line. I just started in with two or 
three little old coffins and a hired hearse, and now 

349 



MARK TWAIN 

look at the thing! I've worked up a business here 
that would satisfy any man, don't care who he is. 
Five years ago, lodged in an attic; live in a swell 
house now, with a mansard roof,. and all the modem 
inconveniences . ' ' 

*'Does a coffin pay so well? Is there much profit 
on a coffin?" 

"6^0-way! How you talk!" Then, with a confi- 
dential wink, a dropping of the voice, and an im- 
pressive laying of his hand on my arm: "Look here; 
there's one thing in this world which isn't ever cheap. 
That's a coffin. There's one thing in this world 
which a person don't ever try to jew you down on. 
That's a coffin. There's one thing in this world 
which a person don't say — 'I'll look around a little, 
and if I find I can't do better I'll come back and 
take it.' That's a coffin. There's one thing in this 
world which a person won't take in pine if he can 
go walnut; and won't take in walnut if he can go 
mahogany; and won't take in mahogany if he can 
go an iron casket with silver door-plate and bronze 
handles. That's a coffin. And there's one thing in 
this world which you don't have to worry aroimd 
after a person to get him to pay for. And thafs a 
coffin. Undertaking? — why it's the dead-surest 
business in Christendom, and the nobbiest. 

"Why, just look at it. A rich man won't have 
anything but yoiir very best; and you can just pile 
it on, too — pile it on and sock it to him — ^he won't 
ever holler. And you take in a poor man, and if 
you work him right he'll bust himself on a single 
lay-out. Or especially a woman. F'r instance: Mrs. 

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LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

O'Flaherty comes in — widow — wiping her eyes and 
kind of moaning. Unhandkerchiefs one eye, bats it 
around tearfully over the stock; says: 

***And fhat might ye ask for that wan?* 

*** Thirty-nine dollars, madam/ says I. 

***It's a foine big price, sure, but Pat shall be 
buried like a gintleman, as he was, if I have to work 
me fingers off for it. I'll have that wan, sor.' 

** * Yes, madam,' says I, 'and it is a very good one, 
too; not costly, to be sure, but in this life we must 
cut our garments to our cloth, as the saying is.* 
And as she starts out, I heave in, kind of casually, 
*This one with the white satin lining is a beauty, 
but I am afraid — well, sixty-five dollars is sl rather — 
rather — but no matter, I felt obliged to say to Mrs. 
O'Shaughnessy — ' 

*"D'ye mane to soy that Bridget O'Shaughnessy 
bought the mate to that joo-iil box to ship that 
dhnmken divil to Purgatory in?' 

"'Yes, madam.* 

*"Then Pat shall go to heaven in the twin to it, 
if it takes the last rap the O'Flahertys can raise; 
and moind you, stick on some extras, too, and 1*11 
give ye another dollar.' 

"And as I lay in with the livery stables, of course 
I don't forget to mention that Mrs. O'Shaughnessy 
hired fifty-four dollars' worth of hacks and flung as 
much style into Dennis's funeral as if he had been 
a dtike or an assassin. And of course she sails in 
and goes the O'Shaughnessy about four hacks and 
an omnibus better. That used to be, but that's all 
played now; that is, in this particiilar town. The 

3SI 



MARK TWAIN 

Irish got to piling up hacks so, on their funerals, that 
a funeral left them ragged and hungry for two years 
afterward; so the priest pitched in and broke it all 
up. He don't allow them to have but two hacks 
now, and sometimes only one." 

"Well," said I, ''if you are so light-hearted and 
jolly in ordinary times, what must you be in an 
epidemic?" 

He shook his head. 

*'No, you're off, there. We don't like to see an 
epidemic. An epidemic don't pay. Well, of course 
I don't mean that, exactly; but it don't pay in 
proportion to the regular thing. Don't it occur 
to you why?" 

"No." 

"Think." 

"I can't imagine. What is it?'* 

"It's just two things." 

"Well, what are they?" 

"One's Embamming." 

"And what's the other?" 

"Ice." 

"How is that?" 

"Well, in ordinary times, a person dies, and we lay 
him up in ice; one day, two days, maybe three, to 
wait for friends to come. Takes a lot of it — melts 
fast. We charge jewelry rates for that ice, and war 
prices for attendance. Well, don't you know, when 
there's an epidemic, they rush 'em to the cemetery 
the minute the breath's out. No market for ice in 
an epidemic. Same with Embamming. You take a 
family that's able to embam, and you've got a soft 

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LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

thing. You can mention sixteen different ways to 
do it — though there aint only one or two ways, when 
you come down to the bottom facts of it — and 
they'll take the highest-priced way, every time. It's 
human nature — ^human nature in grief. It don't 

reason, you see. Time being, it don't care a d n. 

All it wants is physical immortality for deceased, and 
they're willing to pay for it. All youVe got to do 
is to just be ca'm and stack it up — they'll stand the 
racket. Why, man, you can take a defunct that you 
couldn't give away; and get your embamming traps 
around you and go to work ; and in a couple of hours 
he is worth a cool six hundred — that's what he's 
worth. There ain't anything equal to it but trading 
rats for diamonds in time of famine. Well, don't 
you see, when there's an epidemic, people don't wait 
to embam. No, indeed they don't ; and it hurts the 
business like hellth, as we say — ^hurts it like hell-th, 
health, see? — our little joke in the trade. Well, I 
must be going. Give me a call whenever you need 
any — I mean, when you're going by, some time." 

In his joyful high spirits, he did the exaggerating 
himself, if any had been done. I have not enlarged 
on him. 

With the above brief references to inhumation, let 
us leave the subject. As for me, I hope to be 
cremated. I made that remark to my pastor once, 
who said, with what he seemed to think was an im- 
pressive manner: 

* * I wouldn't worry about that, if I had your chances. ** 

Much he knew about it — the family all so op- 
posed to it. 

353 



CHAPTER XLIV 

CITY SIGHTS 

THE old French part of New Orleans — ^anciently 
the Spanish part — bears no resemblance to the 
American end of the city: the American end which 
lies beyond the intervening brick business center. 
The houses are massed in blocks ; are austerely plain 
and dignified; uniform of pattern, with here and 
there a departure from it with pleasant effect ; all are 
plastered on the outside, and nearly all have long, 
iron-railed verandas nmning along the several stories. 
Their chief beauty is the deep, warm, varicolored 
stain with which time and the weather have enriched 
the plaster. It harmonizes with all the surround- 
ings, and has as natural a look of belonging there as 
has the flush upon sunset clouds. This charming 
decoration cannot be successfully imitated; neither 
is it to be found elsewhere in America. 

The iron railings are a specialty, also. The pat- 
tern is often exceedingly light and dainty, and airy 
and graceful — with a large cipher or monogram in the 
center, a delicate cobweb of baffling, intricate forms, 
wrought in steel. The ancient railings are hand- 
made, and are now comparatively rare and propor- 
tionately valuable. They are become bric-^-brac. 

The party had the privilege of idling through this 
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LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

ancient quarter of New Orleans with the South *s 
finest literary genius, the author of The Grandis- 
simes. In him the South has found a masterly- 
delineator of its interior life and its history. In 
truth, I find by experience, that the imtrained eye 
and vacant mind can inspect it and learn of it and 
judge of it more clearly and profitably in his books 
than by personal contact with it. 

With Mr. Cable along to see for you, and describe 
and explain and illimiinate, a jog through that old 
quarter is a vivid pleasure. And you have a vivid 
sense as of imseen or dimly seen things — ^vivid, and 
yet fitful and darkling; you glimpse salient feattues, 
but lose the fine shades or catch them imperfectly 
through the vision of the imagination: a case, as it 
were, of an ignorant, near-sighted stranger traversing 
the rim of wide, vague horizons of Alps with an 
inspired and enHghtened long-sighted native. 

We visited the old St. Louis Hotel, now occupied 
by mimicipal offices. There is nothing strikingly 
remarkable about it ; but one can say of it as of the 
Academy of Music in New York, that if a broom or 
a shovel has ever been used in it there is no circum- 
stantial evidence to back up the fact. It is curious 
that cabbages and hay and things do not grow in 
the Academy of Music; but no doubt it is on accoimt 
of the interruption of the light by the benches, and 
the impossibility of hoeing the crop except in the 
aisles. The fact that the ushers grow their button- 
hole bouquets on the premises shows what might be 
done if they had the right kind of an agricultural 
head to the establishment. 

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MARK TWAIN 

We visited also the venerable Cathedral, and the 
pretty square in front of it; the one dim with re- 
ligious Hght, the other brilliant with the worldly- 
sort, and lovely with orange trees and blossomy 
shrubs; then we drove in the hot sun through the 
wilderness of houses and out onto the wide, dead 
level beyond, where the villas are, and the water- 
wheels to drain the town, and the commons populous 
with cows and children; passing by an old cemetery 
where we were told lie the ashes of an early pirate; 
but we took him on trust, and did not visit him. 
He was a pirate with a tremendous and sanguinary 
history; and as long as he preserved unspotted, in 
retirement, the dignity of his name and the grandeur 
of his ancient calling, homage and reverence were 
his from high and low ; but when at last he descended 
into politics and became a paltry alderman, the 
public ** shook" him, and turned aside and wept. 
When he died, they set up a monument over him; 
and little by little he has come into respect again; 
but it is respect for the pirate, not the alderman. 
To-day the loyal and generous remember only what 
he was, and charitably forget what he became. 

Thence, we drove a few miles across a swamp, 
along a raised shell road, with a canal on one hand 
and a dense wood on the other; and here and there, 
in the distance, a ragged and angular-limbed and 
moss-bearded cypress-top standing out, clear-cut 
against the sky, and as quaint of form as the apple 
trees in Japanese pictures — such was our course and 
the surroundings of it. There was an occasional 
alligator swimming comfortably along in the canal, 

356 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

and an occasional picturesque colored person on the 
bank, flinging his statue-rigid reflection upon the still 
water and watching for a bite. 

And by and by we reached the West End, a col- 
lection of hotels of the usual Hght summer-resort 
pattern, with broad verandas all aroimd, and the 
waves of the wide and blue Lake Pontchartrain lap- 
ping the thresholds. We had dinner on a ground 
veranda over the water — the chief dish the renowned 
fish called pompano, deHcious as the less criminal 
forms of sin. 

Thousands of people come by rail and carriage to 
West End and to Spanish Fort every evening, and 
dine, listen to the bands, take strolls in the open 
air under the electric lights, go sailing on the lake, 
and entertain themselves in various and sundrj^ other 
ways. 

We had opportunities on other days and in other 
places to test the pompano. Notably, at an edi- 
torial dinner at one of the clubs in the city. He was 
in his last possible perfection there, and justified his 
fame. In his suite was a tall pyramid of scarlet 
crayfish — large ones; as large as one's thumb; deli- 
cate, palatable, appetizing. Also deviled whitebait; 
also shrimps of choice quality ; and a platter of small 
soft-shell crabs of a most superior breed. The other 
dishes were what one might get at Delmonico's or 
Buckingham Palace ; those I have spoken of can be had 
in similar perfection in New Orleans only, I suppose. 

In the West and South they have a new institution 
— the Broom Brigade. It is composed of young 
ladies who dress in a uniform costume, and go 

357 



MARK TWAIN 

through the infantry drill, with broom in place of 
musket. It is a very pretty sight, on private view. 
When they perform on the stage of a theater, in the 
blaze of colored fires, it must be a fine and fasci- 
nating spectacle. I saw them go through their com- 
plex manual with grace, spirit, and admirable pre- 
cision. I saw them do everything which a human 
being can possibly do with a broom, except sweep. 
I did not see them sweep. But I know they could 
learn. What they have already learned proves that. 
And if they ever should learn, and should go on the 
war-path down Tchoupitoulas or some of those other 
streets around there, those thoroughfares would bear 
a greatly improved aspect in a very few minutes. 
But the girls themselves wouldn't; so nothing would 
be really gained, after all. 

The drill was in the Washington Artillery building. 
In this building we saw many interesting relics of 
the war. Also a fine oil-painting representing Stone- 
wall Jackson's last interview with General Lee. Both 
men are on horseback. Jackson has just ridden 
up, and is accosting Lee. The picture is very valu- 
able, on accoiuit of the portraits, which are authentic. 
But like many another historical picture, it means 
nothing without its label. And one label will fit 
it as well as another: 

First Interview between Lee and Jackson. 

Last Interview between Lee and Jackson. 

Jackson Introducing Himself to Lee. 

Jackson Accepting Lee's Invitation to Dinner. 

Jackson Declining Lee's Invitation to Dinner — 
with Thanks. 

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LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

Jackson Apologizing for a Heavy Defeat, 

Jackson Reporting a Great Victory. 

Jackson Asking Lee for a Match. 

It tells one story, and a sufficient one; for it says 
quite plainly and satisfactorily, ''Here are Lee and 
Jackson together." The artist would have made it 
tell that this is Lee and Jackson's last interview if 
he could have done it. But he couldn't, for there 
wasn't any way to do it. A good legible label is 
usually worth, for information, a ton of significant 
attitude and expression in a historical pictiu-e. In 
Rome, people with fine sympathetic natures stand 
up and weep in front of the celebrated ''Beatrice 
Cenci the Day before Her Execution." It shows 
what a label can do. If they did not know the pic- 
ture, they would inspect it immoved, and say, 
"Young girl with hay fever; yoimg girl with her 
head in a bag." 

I found the half -forgotten Southern intonations 
and elisions as pleasing to my ear as they had for- 
merly been. A Southerner talks music. At least it 
is music to me, but then I was bom in the South. 
The educated Southerner has no use for an r, except 
at the beginning of a word. He says "honah," and 
"dinnah," and "Gove'nuh," and "befo' the waw," 
and so on. The words may lack charm to the eye, 
in print, but they have it to the ear. When did the 
r disappear from Southern speech, and how did it 
come to disappear? The custom of dropping it was 
not borrowed from the North, nor inherited from 
England. Many Southerners — most Southerners — 
put a y into occasional words that begin with the k 

359 



MARK TWAIN 

sound. For instance, they say Mr. K'yahtah 
(Carter) and speak of playing k'yahds or of riding 
in the k'yahs. And they have the pleasant custom 
— long ago fallen into decay in the North — of fre- 
quently employing the respectful *'Sir." Instead of 
the cin-t Yes, and the abrupt No, they say *'Yes, 
suh"; *'No, suh." 

But there are some infelicities, such as "like" for 
"as," and the addition of an "at" where it isn't 
needed. I heard an educated gentleman say, "Like 
the flag-officer did." His cook or his butler would 
have said, "Like the flag-officer done." You hear 
gentlemen say, "Where have you been at?" And 
here is the aggravated form — heard a ragged street 
Arab say it to a comrade: "I was a-ask'n' Tom whah 
you was a-sett'n' at." The very elect carelessly say 
"will" when they mean "shall"; and many of them 
say "I didn't go to do it," meaning "I didn't mean 
to do it." The Northern word "guess" — imported 
from England, where it used to be common, and now 
regarded by satirical Englishmen as a Yankee origi- 
nal — is but little used among Southerners. They say 
"reckon." They haven't any "doesn't" in their 
language; they say "don't" instead. The unpol- 
ished often use "went" for "gone." It is nearly as 
bad as the Northern "hadn't ought." This reminds 
me that a remark of a very peculiar nature was made 
here in my neighborhood (in the North) a few days 
ago : " He hadn't ought to have went. ' ' How is that ? 
Isn't that a good deal of a triumph? One knows the 
orders combined in this half-breed's architecture 
without inquiring: one parent Northern, the other 

360 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

Southern. Today I heard a schoolmistress ask, 
' ' Where is John gone ?" This form is so common — so 
nearly universal, in fact — that if she had used 
** whither" instead of ** where," I think it w^ould have 
soimded like an affectation. 

We picked up one excellent word — a word worth 
traveling to New Orleans to get; a nice limber, ex- 
pressive, handy word — ''Lagniappe." They pro- 
nounce it la,nny-yap. It is Spanish — so they said. 
We discovered it at the head of a column of odds 
and ends in the Picayune the first day ; heard twenty 
people use it the second ; inquired what it meant the 
third; adopted it and got facility in swinging it the 
fourth. It has a restricted meaning, but I think the 
people spread it out a little when they choose. It 
is the equivalent of the thirteenth roll in a "baker's 
dozen." It is something thrown in, gratis, for good 
measure. The custom originated in the Spanish 
quarter of the city. When a child or a servant buys 
something in a shop — or even the mayor or the 
governor, for aught I know — he finishes the operation 
by saying : 

*'Give me something for lagniappe." 

The shopman always responds; gives the child a 
bit of licorice-root, gives the servant a cheap cigar 
or a spool of thread, gives the governor — I don't 
know what he gives the governor; support, likely. 

When you are invited to drink — and this does 
occur now and then in New Orleans — and j'-ou say, 
''What, again? — no, I've had enough," the other 
party says, ''But just this one time more — this is for 
lagniappe." When the beau perceives that he is 

361 



MARK TWAIN 

stacking his compliments a trifle too high, and sees 
by the young lady's countenance that the edifice 
would have been better with the top compliment 
left off, he puts his *' I beg pardon, no harm intended,'* 
into the briefer form of ''Oh, that's for lagniappe.'* 
If the waiter in the restaurant stumbles and spills 
a gill of coffee down the back of your neck, he says, 
*'F'r lagniappe, sah," and gets you another cup 
without extra charge. 



CHAPTER XLV 

SOUTHERN SPORTS 

IN the North one hears the war mentioned, in social 
conversation, once a month; sometimes as often 
as once a week; but as a distinct subject for talk, it 
has long ago been relieved of duty. There are suffi- 
cient reasons for this. Given a dinner company of 
six gentlemen to-day, it can easily happen that four 
of them — and possibly five — were not in the field at 
all. So the chances are four to two, or five to one, 
that the war will at no time during the evening 
become the topic of conversation; and the chances 
are still greater that if it become the topic it will 
remain so but a little while. If you add six ladies 
to the company, you have added six people who saw 
so little of the dread realities of the war that they 
ran out of talk concerning them years ago, and now 
would soon weary of the war topic if you brought 
it up. 

The case is very different in the South. There, 
every man you meet was in the war; and every lady 
you meet saw the war. The war is the great chief 
topic of conversation. The interest in it is vivid 
and constant; the interest in other topics is fleeting. 
Mention of the war will wake up a dull company 
and set their tongues going when nearly any other 

363 



MARK TWAIN 

topic would fail. In the South, the war is what 
A. D. is elsewhere; they date from it. All day long 
you hear things "placed" as having happened since 
the waw; or du'in' the waw; or befo' the waw; or 
right aftah the waw; or 'bout two yeahs or five 
yeahs or ten yeahs befo' the waw or aftah the waw. 
It shows how intimately every individual was vis- 
ited, in his own person, by that tremendous episode. 
It gives the inexperienced stranger a better idea of 
what a vast and comprehensive calamity invasion is 
than he can ever get by reading books at the fireside. 

At a club one evening, a gentleman turned to me 
and said, in an aside: 

"You notice, of course, that we are nearly always 
talking about the war. It isn't because we haven't 
anything else to talk about, but because nothing else 
has so strong an interest for us. And there is an- 
other reason: In the war, each of us, in his own 
person, seems to have sampled all the different 
varieties of human experience ; as a consequence, you 
can't mention an outside matter of any sort but it 
will certainly remind some listener of something that 
happened during the war — and out he comes with 
it. Of course that brings the talk back to the war. 
You may try all you want to, to keep other subjects 
before the house, and we may all join in and help, 
but there can be but one result: the most random 
topic would load every man up with war reminis- 
cences, and shut him up, too; and talk would be likely 
to stop presently, because you can't talk pale in- 
consequentialities when you've got a crimson fact or 
fancy in your head that you are burning to fetch out." 

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LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

The poet was sitting some little distance away; 
and presently he began to speak — about the moon. 

The gentleman who had been talking to me re- 
marked in an aside: ** There, the moon is far enough 
from the seat of war, but you will see that it will 
suggest something to somebody about the war; in 
ten minutes from now the moon, as a topic, will be 
shelved." 

The poet was saying he had noticed something 
which was a surprise to him; had had the impression 
that down here, toward the equator, the moonlight 
was much stronger and brighter than up North ; had 
had the impression that when he visited New Orieans, 
many years ago, the moon — 

Interruption from the other end of the room: 

"Let me explain that. Reminds me of an anec- 
dote. Everything is changed since the war, for 
better or for worse; but you'll find people down here 
born grumblers, who see no change except the change 
for the worse. There was an old negro woman of 
this sort. A young New-Yorker said in her presence, 
'What a wonderful moon you have down here ! * She 
sighed and said, *Ah, bless yo' heart, honey, you 
ought to seen dat moon befo' de waw!'" 

The new topic was dead already. But the poet 
resurrected it, and gave it a new start. 

A brief dispute followed, as to whether the differ- 
ence between Northern and Southern moonlight 
really existed or was only imagined. Moonlight 
talk drifted easily into talk about artificial methods 
of dispelling darkness. Then somebody remembered 
that when Farragut advanced upon Port Hudson 

365 



MARK TWAIN 

on a dark night — and did not wish to assist the aim 
of the Confederate gunners — he carried no battle- 
lanterns, but painted the decks of his ships white, and 
thus created a dim but valuable light, which enabled 
his own men to grope their way around with con- 
siderable facility. At this point the war got the 
floor again — ^the ten minutes not quite up yet. 

I was not sorry, for war talk by men who have 
been in a war is always interesting; whereas moon 
talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is 
likely to be dull. 

We went to a cockpit in New Orleans on a Satur- 
day afternoon. I had never seen a cock-fight before. 
There were men and boys there of all ages and all 
colors, and of many languages and nationahties. But 
I noticed one quite conspicuous and surprising ab- 
sence: the traditional brutal faces. There were no 
brutal faces. With no cock-fighting going on, you 
could have played the gathering on a stranger for 
a prayer-meeting; and after it began, for a revival — 
provided you blindfolded your stranger — for the 
shouting was something prodigious. 

A negro and a white man were in the ring; every- 
body else outside. The cocks were brought in in 
sacks; and when time was called, they were taken 
out by the two bottle-holders, stroked, caressed, 
poked toward each other, and finally liberated. The 
big black cock plunged instantly at the little gray 
one and struck him on the head with his spur. The 
gray responded with spirit. Then the Babel of 
many-tongued shoutings broke out, and ceased not 
thenceforth. When the cocks had been fighting 

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LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

some little time, I was expecting them momently 
to drop dead, for both were blind, red with blood, 
and so exhausted that they frequently fell down. 
Yet they would not give up, neither would they die. 
The negro and the white man would pick them up 
every few seconds, wipe them off, blow cold water on 
them in a fine spray, and take their heads in their 
mouths and hold them there a moment — to warm 
back the perishing Hfe perhaps; I do not know. 
Then, being set down again, the dying creatures 
would totter gropingly about, with dragging wings, 
find each other, strike a guesswork blow or two, 
and fall exhausted once more. 

I did not see the end of the battle. I forced my- 
self to endiu*e it as long as I could, but it was too 
pitiful a sight; so I made frank confession to that 
effect, and we retired. We heard afterward that the 
black cock died in the ring, and fighting to the last. 

Evidently there is abundant fascination about this 
** sport" for such as have had a degree of familiarity 
with it. I never saw people enjoy anything more 
than this gathering enjoyed this fight. The case was 
the same with old gray-heads and with boys of ten. 
They lost themselves in frenzies of dehght. The 
''cocking-main'* is an inhuman sort of entertain- 
ment, there is no question about that; still, it seems 
a much more respectable and far less cruel sport than 
fox-hunting — for the cocks like it; they experience, 
as well as confer enjoyment; which is not the fox's 
case. 

We assisted — ^in the French sense — at a mule- 
race, one day. I believe I enjoyed this contest more 

367 



MARK TWAIN 

than any other mule there. I enjoyed it more than 
I remember having enjoyed any other animal race 
I ever saw. The grand-stand was well filled with 
the beauty and the chivalry of New Orleans. That 
phrase is not original with me. It is the Southern 
reporter's. He has used it for two generations. He 
uses it twenty times a day, or twenty thousand 
imes a day, or a million times a day — according to 
the exigencies. He is obliged to use it a milHon 
times a day, if he have occasion to speak of respect- 
able men and women that often ; for he has no other 
phrase for such service except that single one. He 
never tires of it; it always has a fine sound to him. 
There is a kind of swell, medieval bulliness and 
tinsel about it that pleases his gaudy, barbaric soul. 
If he had been in Palestine in the early times, we 
should have had no references to ''much people" 
out of him. No, he would have said ''the beauty 
and the chivalry of Galilee" assembled to hear the 
Sermon on the Mount. It is likely that the men 
and women of the South are sick enough of that 
phrase by this time, and would like a change, but 
there is no immediate prospect of their getting it. 

The New Orleans editor has a strong, compact, 
direct, imfiowery style; wastes no words, and does 
not gush. Not so with his average correspondent. 
In the Appendix I have quoted a good letter, penned 
by a trained hand; but the average correspondent 
hurls a style which differs from that. For instance: 

The Times-Democrat sent a relief -steamer up one 
of the bayous, last April. This steamer landed at a 
village, up there somewhere, and the captain invited 

368 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

some of the ladies of the village to make a short trip 
with him. They accepted and came aboard, and 
the steamboat shoved out up the creek. That was 
all there was ''to it." And that is all that the editor 
of the Times-Democrat would have got out of it. 
There w^as nothing in the thing but statistics, and 
he would have got nothing else out of it. He would 
probably have even tabulated them; partly to secure 
perfect clearness of statement, and partly to save 
space. But his special correspondent knows other 
methods of handling statistics. He just throws off 
all restraint and wallows in them: 

On Saturday, early in the morning, the beauty of the place 
graced our cabin, and proud of her fair freight the gallant little 
boat glided up the bayou. 

Twenty-two words to say the ladies came aboard 
and the boat shoved out up the creek, is a clean 
waste of ten good words, and is also destructive of 
compactness of statement. 

The trouble with the Southern reporter is — 
Women. They unsettle him ; they throw him off his 
balance. He is plain, and sensible, and satisfactory, 
until woman heaves in sight. Then he goes all to 
pieces; his mind totters, becomes flowery and idiotic. 
From reading the above extract, you would imagine 
that this student of Sir Walter Scott is an appren- 
tice, and knows next to nothing about handling a 
pen. On the contrary, he furnishes plenty of proofs, 
in his long letter, that he knows well enough how to 
handle it when the women are not around to give 
him the artificial-flower complaint. For instance: 

369 



MARK TWAIN 

At four o'clock ominous clouds began to gather in the south- 
east, and presently from the Gulf there came a blow which in- 
creased in severity every moment. It was not safe to leave 
the landing then, and there was a delay. The oaks shook off 
long tresses of their mossy beards to the tugging of the wind, 
and the bayou in its ambition put on miniature waves in mocking 
of much larger bodies of water. A lull permitted a start, and 
homeward we steamed, an inky sky overhead and a heavy wind 
blowing. As darkness crept on, there were few on board who 
did not wish themselves nearer home. 

There is nothing the matter with that. It is good 
description, compactly put. Yet there was great 
temptation, there, to drop into lurid writing. 

But let us return to the mule. Since I left him, 
I have rummaged around and found a full report of 
the race. In it I find confirmation of the theory 
which I broached just now — namely, that the trouble 
with the Southern reporter is Women: Women, 
supplemented by Walter Scott and his knights and 
beauty and chivalry, and so on. This is an excellent 
report, as long as the women stay out of it. But 
when they intrude, we have this frantic result: 

It will be probably a long time before the ladies' stand presents 
such a sea of foamlike loveliness as it did yesterday. The New 
Orleans women are always charming, but never so much so as 
at this time of the year, when in their dainty spring costumes 
they bring with them a breath of balmy freshness and an odor 
of sanctity unspeakable. The stand was so crowded with them 
that, walking at their feet and seeing no possibility of approach, 
many a man appreciated as he never did before the Peri's feeling 
at the Gates of Paradise, and wondered what was the priceless 
boon that would admit him to their sacred presence. Sparkling 
on their white-robed breasts or shoulders were the colors of their 
favorite knights, and were it not for the fact that the doughty 
heroes appeared on unromantic mules, it would have been easy 
to imagine one of King Arthur's gala-days. 

370 







COLLISION 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

There were thirteen mules in the first heat; all 
sorts of mules, they were; all sorts of complexions, 
gaits, dispositions, aspects. Some were handsome 
creatures, some were not; some were sleek, some 
hadn't had their fur brushed lately; some were inno- 
cently gay and frisky ; some were full of malice and all 
unrighteousness; guessing from looks, some of them 
thought the matter on hand was war, some thought 
it was a lark, the rest took it for a religious occa- 
sion. And each mule acted according to his con- 
victions. The result was an absence of harmony well 
compensated by a conspicuous presence of variety — 
variety of a picturesque and entertaining sort. 

All the riders were young gentlemen in fashionable 
society. If the reader has been wondering why it is 
that the ladies of New Orleans attend so humble an 
orgy as a mule-race, the thing is explained now. It 
is a fashion freak; all connected with it are people 
of fashion. 

It is great fun, and cordially liked. The mule- 
race is one of the marked occasions of the year. It 
has brought some pretty fast mules to the front. 
One of these had to be ruled out, because he was so 
fast that he turned the thing into a one-mule con- 
test, and robbed it of one of its best features — 
variety. But every now and then somebody dis- 
guises him with a new name and a new complexion, 
and rings him in again. 

The riders dress in full jockey costtmies of bright- 
colored silks, satins, and velvets. 

The thirteen mules got away in a body, after a 
couple of false starts, and scampered off with pro- 

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MARK TWAIN 

digious spirit. As each mule and each rider had a 
distinct opinion of his own as to how the race ought 
to be run, and which side of the track was best in 
certain circumstances, and how often the track ought 
to be crossed, and when a collision ought to be 
accomplished, and when it ought to be avoided, 
these twenty-six conflicting opinions created a most 
fantastic and picturesque confusion, and the result- 
ing spectacle was killingly comical. 

Mile heat; time, 2 :2 2. Eight of the thirteen mules 
distanced. I had a bet on a mule which would have 
won if the procession had been reversed. The 
second heat was good fun; and so w^as the "consola- 
tion race for beaten mules," which followed later; 
but the first heat was the best in that respect. 

I think that much the most enjoyable of all races 
is a steamboat race; but, next to that, I prefer the 
gay and joyous mule-rush. Two red-hot steamboats 
raging along, neck-and-neck, straining every nerve — 
that is to say, every rivet in the boilers — quaking and 
shaking and groaning from stem to stem, spouting 
white steam from the pipes, pouring black smoke 
from the chimneys, raining down sparks, parting the 
river into long breaks of hissing foam — this is sport 
that makes a body's very liver curl with enjoyment. 
A horse-race is pretty tame and colorless in com- 
parison. Still, a horse-race might be well enough, 
in its way, perhaps, if it were not for the tiresome 
false starts. But then, nobody is ever killed. At 
least, nobody was ever killed when I was at a horse- 
race. They have been crippled, it is true; but this 
is little to the purpose. 

372 



CHAPTER XLVI 

ENCHANTMENTS AND ENCHANTERS 

THE largest annual event in New Orleans is a 
something which we arrived too late to sample — 
the Mardi-Gras festivities. I saw the procession of 
the Mystic Crew of Comus there, twenty-four years 
ago — ^with knights and nobles and so on, clothed in 
silken and golden Paris-made gorgeousnesses, planned 
and bought for that single night's use; and in their 
train all manner of giants, dwarfs, monstrosities, and 
other diverting grotesquerie — a startling and won- 
derful sort of show, as it filed solemnly and silently 
down the street in the light of its smoking and flick- 
ering torches ; but it is said that in these latter days 
the spectacle is mightily augmented, as to cost, 
splendor, and variety. There is a chief personage — 
"Rex"; and if I remember rightly, neither this king 
nor any of his great following of subordinates is 
known to any outsider. All these people are gentle- 
men of position and consequence; and it is a proud 
thing to belong to the organization; so the mystery 
in which they hide their personality is merely for 
romance's sake, and not on account of the poHce. 

Mardi-Gras is of course a relic of the French and 
Spanish occupation; but I judge that the religious 
feature has been pretty well knocked out of it now. 

373 



MARK TWAIN 

Sir Walter has got the advantage of the gentlemen of 
the cowl and rosary, and he will stay. His medieval 
business, supplemented by the monsters and the 
oddities, and the pleasant creatures from fairy-land, is 
finer to look at than the poor fantastic inventions and 
performances of the reveling rabble of the priest's 
day, and serves quite as well, perhaps, to emphasize 
the day and admonish men that the grace-line be- 
tween the worldly season and the holy one is 
reached. 

This Mardi-Gras pageant was the exclusive posses- 
sion of New Orleans until recently. But now it has 
spread to Memphis and St. Louis and Baltimore. 
It has probably reached its limit. It is a thing 
which could hardly exist in the practical North; 
would certainly last but a very brief time; as brief 
a time as it would last in London. For the soul of 
it is the romantic, not the funny and the grotesque. 
Take away the romantic mysteries, the kings and 
knights and big-sounding titles, and Mardi-Gras 
would die, down there in the South. The very 
feature that keeps it alive in the South — girly-girly 
romance — would kill it in the North or in London. 
Puck and Punchy and the press universal, would fall 
upon it and make merciless fun of it, and its first 
exhibition would be also its last. 

Against the crimes of the French Revolution and 
of Bonaparte may be set two compensating bene- 
factions: the Revolution broke the chains of the 
ancien regime and of the Church, and made a nation 
of abject slaves a nation of freemen; and Bonaparte 
instituted the setting of merit above birth, and also 

374 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

so completely stripped the divinity from royalty 
that, whereas crowned heads in Europe were gods be- 
fore, they are only men since, and can never be gods 
again, but only figure-heads, and answerable for their 
acts like common clay. Such benefactions as these 
compensate the temporary harm which Bonaparte 
and the Revolution did, and leave the worid in debt 
to them for these great and permanent services to 
Hberty, himianity, and progress. 

Then comes Sir Walter Scott with his enchant- 
ments, and by his single might checks this wave of 
progress, and even turns it back; sets the worid in 
love wdth dreams and phantoms; with decayed and 
swinish forms of religion; with decayed and degraded 
systems of government; with the sillinesses and 
emptinesses, sham grandeurs, sham gauds, and sham 
chivalries of a brainless and worthless long- vanished 
society. He did measureless harm; more real and 
lasting harm, perhaps, than any other individual that 
ever wrote. Most of the world has now outlived 
good part of these harms, though by no means all 
of them; but in our South they flourish pretty force- 
fully still. Not so forcefully as half a generation ago, 
perhaps, but still forcefully. There, the genuine and 
wholesome civilization of the nineteenth century is 
curiously confused and commingled with the Walter 
Scott Middle- Age sham civilization, and so you have 
practical common sense, progressive ideas, and pro- 
gressive works, mixed up with the duel, the inflated 
speech, and the jejune romanticism of an absurd past 
that is dead, and out of charity ought to be buried. 
But for the Sir Walter disease, the character of the 

375 



MARK TWAIN 

Southerner — or Southron, according to Sir Walter's 
starchier way of phrasing it — would be wholly mod- 
em, in place of modem and medieval mixed, and the 
South would be fully a generation further advanced 
than it is. It was Sir Walter that made every gentle- 
man in the South a major or a colonel, or a general 
or a judge, before the war; and it was he, also, that 
made these gentlemen value these bogus decorations. 
For it was he that created rank and caste down there, 
and also reverence for rank and caste, and pride and 
pleasure in them. Enough is laid on slavery, with- 
out fathering upon it these creations and contribu- 
tions of Sir Walter. 

Sir Walter had so large a hand in making Southern 
character, as it existed before the war, that he is in 
great measure responsible for the war. It seems a 
little harsh toward a dead man to say that we never 
should have had any war but for Sir Walter ; and yet 
something of a plausible argument might, perhaps, 
be made in support of that wild proposition. The 
Southerner of the American Revolution owned 
slaves; so did the Southerner of the Civil War; but 
the former resembles the latter as an Englishman 
resembles a Frenchman. The change of character 
can be traced rather more easily to Sir Walter's 
influence than to that of any other thing or per- 
son. 

One may observe, by one or two signs, how deeply 
that influence penetrated, and how strongly it holds. 
If one take up a Northern or Southern literary peri- 
odical of forty or fifty years ago, he will find it filled 
with wordy, windy, flowery ''eloquence," roman- 

376 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

ticism, sentimentality — all imitated from Sir Walter, 
and sufficiently badly done, too — ^innocent travesties 
of his style and methods, in fact. This sort of litera- 
ture being the fashion in both sections of the coimtry, 
there was opportunity for the fairest competition; 
and as a consequence, the South was able to show as 
many well-known literary names, proportioned to 
population, as the North could. 

But a change has come, and there is no opportu- 
nity now for a fair competition between North and 
South. For the North has thrown out that old in- 
flated style, whereas the Southern writer still clings 
to it — clings to it and has a restricted market for his 
wares, as a consequence. There is as much literary 
talent in the South, now, as ever there was, of course ; 
but its work can gain but slight currency under 
present conditions; the authors write for the past, 
not the present; they use obsolete forms and a dead 
language. But when a Southerner of genius writes 
modem English, his book goes upon crutches no 
longer, but upon wings ; and they carry it swiftly all 
about America and England, and through the great 
English reprint publishing-houses of Germany — as 
witness the experience of Mr. Cable and "Uncle 
Remus," two of the very few Southern authors who 
do not write in the Southern style. Instead of three 
or four widely known literary names, the South 
ought to have a dozen or two — and will have them 
when Sir Walter's time is out. 

A curious exemplification of the power of a single 
book for good or harm is shown in the effects wrought 
by Don Quixote and those wrought by Ivanhoe. The 

377 



MARK TWAIN 

first swept the world's admiration for the medieval 
chivalry silliness out of existence; and the other re- 
stored it. As far as our South is concerned, the 
good work done by Cervantes is pretty nearly a 
dead letter, so effectually has Scott's pernicious 
work undermined it. 



CHAPTER XLVII 

"uncle REMUS " AND MR. CABLE 

MR. JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS ("Uncle Re- 
. mus") was to arrive from Atlanta at seven 
o'clock Sunday morning; so we got up and received 
him. We were able to detect him among the crowd 
of arrivals at the hotel counter by his correspondence 
with a description of him which had been furnished 
us from a trustworthy source. He was said to be 
undersized, red-haired, and somewhat freckled. He 
was the only man in the party whose outside talHed 
with this bill of particulars. He was said to be very 
shy. He is a shy man. Of this there is no doubt. 
It may not show on the stu^ace, but the sh3niess is 
there. After days of intimacy one wonders to see 
that it is still in about as strong force as ever. 
There is a fine and beautiful nature hidden behind 
it, as all know who have read the "Uncle Remus'* 
book; and a fine genius, too, as all know by the same 
sign. I seem to be talking quite freely about this 
neighbor; but in talking to the pubHc I am but 
talking to his personal friends, and these things are 
permissible among friends. 

He deeply disappointed a number of children who 
had flocked eagerly to Mr. Cable's house to get a 

379 



MARK TWAIN 

glimpse of the illustrious sage and oracle of the 
nation's nurseries. They said: 

"Why, he's white!" 

They were grieved about it. So, to console them, 
the book was brought, that they might hear Uncle 
Remus 's Tar-Baby story from the lips of Uncle 
Remus himself — or what, in their outraged eyes, was 
left of him. But it turned out that he had never 
read aloud to people, and was too shy to venture the 
attempt now. Mr. Cable and I read from books of 
ours, to show him what an easy trick it was ; but his 
immortal shyness was proof against even this saga- 
cious strategy; so we had to read about Brer Rabbit 
ourselves. 

Mr. Harris ought to be able to read the negro 
dialect better than anybody else, for in the matter 
of writing it he is the only master the country has 
produced. Mr. Cable is the only master in the 
writing of French dialects that the country has pro- 
duced; and he reads them in perfection. It was a 
great treat to hear him read about Jean-ah Poquelin, 
and about Innerarity and his famous *'pigshoo" 
representing "Louisihanna Rif-insing to Hanter the 
Union,'* along with passages of nicely shaded German 
dialect from a novel which was still in manuscript. 

It came out in conversation that in two different 
instances Mr. Cable got into grotesque trouble by 
using, in his books, next-to-impossible French names 
which nevertheless happened to be borne by living 
and sensitive citizens of New Orleans. His names 
were either inventions or were borrowed from the 
ancient and obsolete past, I do not now remember 

380 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

which; but at any rate Hving bearers of them turned 
up, and were a good deal hurt at having attention 
directed to themselves and their affairs in so ex- 
cessively public a manner. 

Mr. Warner and I had an experience of the same 
sort when we wrote the book called The Gilded Age. 
There is a character in it called ''Sellers." I do 
not remember what his first name was, in the be- 
ginning; but an3rway, Mr. Warner did not like it, 
and wanted it improved. He asked me if I was able 
to imagine a person named "Eschol Sellers." Of 
coiu*se I said I could not, without stimulants. He said 
that away out West, once, he had met, and contem- 
plated, and actually shaken hands with a man bearing 
that impossible name — ' ' Eschol Sellers. ' ' He added : 

"It was twenty years ago; his name has probably 
carried him off before this; and if it hasn't, he will 
never see the book anyhow. We will confiscate his 
name. The name you are using is common, and there- 
fore dangerous; there are probably a thousand Sel- 
lerses bearing it, and the whole horde will come after 
us; but Eschol Sellers is a safe name — ^it is a rock." 

So we borrowed that name; and when the book 
had been out about a week, one of the stateliest and 
handsomest and most aristocratic-looking white men 
that ever lived, called around, with the most formi- 
dable libel suit in his pocket that ever — well, in brief, 
we got his permission to suppress an edition of ten 
million^ copies of the book and change that name to 
"Beriah Sellers" in future editions. 

1 Figures taken from memory, and probably incorrect. Think it 
was more. 

381 



o 



CHAPTER XLVIII 

SUGAR AND POSTAGE 

NE day, on the street, I encountered the man 
whom, of all men, I most wished to see — 
Horace Bixby; formerly pilot under me — or rather, 
over me — now captain of the great steamer City of 
Baton Rouge, the latest and swiftest addition to the 
Anchor Line. The same slender figure, the same 
tight curls, the same spring step, the same alertness, 
the same decision of eye and answering decision of 
hand, the same erect military bearing; not an inch 
gained or lost in girth, not an ounce gained or lost 
in weight, not a hair turned. It is a curious thing, 
to leave a man thirty-five years old, and come back 
at the end of twenty-one years and find him still 
only thirty-five. I have not had an experience of 
this kind before, I believe. There were some crow's- 
feet, but they counted for next to nothing, since 
they were inconspicuous. 

His boat was just in. I had been waiting several 
days for her, purposing to retvim to St. Louis in her. 
The captain and I joined a party of ladies and 
gentlemen, guests of Major Wood, and went down 
the river fifty-four miles, in a swift tug, to ex- 
Governor Warmoth's sugar-plantation. Stnmg along 
below the city was a number of decayed, ram 

382 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

shackly, superannuated old steamboats, not one of 
which had I ever seen before. They had all been 
built, and worn out, and thrown aside, since I was 
here last. This gives one a realizing sense of the 
frailness of a Mississippi boat and the briefness of 
its life. 

Six miles below town a fat and battered brick 
chimney, sticking above the magnolias and Hve-oaks, 
was pointed out as the monument erected by an 
appreciative nation to celebrate the battle of New 
Orleans — ^Jackson's victory over the British, Jan- 
uary 8, 1815. The war had ended, the two nations 
were at peace, but the news had not yet reached 
New Orieans. If we had had the cable telegraph 
in those days, this blood would not have been spilt, 
those lives would not have been wasted; and better 
still, Jackson would probably never have been Presi- 
dent. We have gotten over the harms done us by 
the War of 181 2, but not over some of those done us 
by Jackson's presidency. 

The Warmoth plantation covers a vast deal of 
ground, and the hospitality of the Warmoth mansion 
is graduated to the same large scale. We saw steam- 
plows at work, here, for the first time. The traction 
engine travels about on its own wheels, till it reaches 
the required spot; then it stands still and by means 
of a wire rope pulls the huge plow toward itself 
two or three hundred yards across the field, between 
the rows of cane. The thing cuts down into the 
black mold a foot and a half deep. The plow looks 
like a fore-and-aft brace of a Hudson River steamer, 
inverted. When the negro steersman sits on one 

383 



MARK TWAIN 

end of it, that end tilts down near the ground, while 
the other sticks up high in air. This great seesaw 
goes rolling and pitching like a ship at sea, and it is 
not every circus-rider that could stay on it. 

The plantation contains two thousand six hun- 
dred acres; six hundred and fifty are in cane; and 
there is a fruitful orange grove of five thousand 
trees. The cane is cultivated after a modem and 
intricate scientific fashion, too elaborate and com- 
plex for me to attempt to describe; but it lost forty 
thousand dollars last year. I forget the other de- 
tails. However, this year's crop will reach ten or 
twelve hundred tons of sugar, consequently last 
year's loss will not matter. These troublesome and 
expensive scientific methods achieve a yield of a 
ton and a half, and from that to two tons, to the 
acre; which is three or four times what the yield of 
an acre was in my time. 

The drainage ditches were everjrwhere alive with 
little crabs — ''fiddlers." One saw them scampering 
sidewise in every direction whenever they heard a 
disturbing noise. Expensive pests, these crabs; for 
they bore into the levees, and ruin them. 

The great sugar-house was a wilderness of tubs 
and tanks and vats and filters, pumps, pipes, and 
machinery. The process of making sugar is exceed- 
ingly interesting. First, you heave your cane into 
the centrifugals and grind out the juice; then nm it 
through the evaporating -pan to extract the fiber; 
then through the bone-filter to remove the alcohol; 
then through the clarifying-tanks to discharge the 
molasses; then through the granulating-pipe to con- 

384 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

dense it; then through the vacuum -pan to extract 
the vacuum. It is now ready for market. I have 
jotted these particulars down from memory. The 
thing looks simple and easy. Do not deceive your- 
self. To make sugar is really one of the most diffi- 
cult things in the world. And to make it right is 
next to impossible. If you will examine your own 
supply every now and then for a term of years, and 
tabulate the result, you will find that not two men in 
twenty can make sugar without getting sand into it. 

We could have gone down to the mouth of the 
river and visited Captain Eads's great work, the 
*' jetties," where the river has been compressed 
between walls, and thus deepened to twenty-six feet; 
but it was voted useless to go, since at this stage of 
the water everything would be covered up and 
invisible. 

We could have visited that ancient and singular 
burg, "Pilot-town," which stands on stilts in the 
water — so they say ; where nearly all communication 
is by skiff and canoe, even to the attending of wed- 
dings and funerals; and where the littlest boys and 
girls are as handy with the oar as tmamphibious 
children are with the velocipede. 

We could have done a number of other things ; but 
on account of Hmited time, we went back home. 
The sail up the breezy and sparkling river was a 
charming experience, and would have been satisfy- 
ingly sentimental and romantic but for the interrup- 
tions of the tug's pet parrot, whose tireless comments 
upon the scenery and the guests were always this- 
worldly, and often profane. He had also a super- 

385 



MARK TWAIN 

abundance of the discordant, ear-splitting, metallic 
laugh common to his breed — a machine-made laugh, 
a Frankenstein laugh, with the soul left out of it. 
He applied it to every sentimental remark, and to 
every pathetic song. He cackled it out with hideous 
energy after ''Home again, home again, from a 

foreign shore," and said he ** wouldn't give a d 

for a tug-load of such rot." Romance and senti- 
ment cannot long survive this sort of discourage- 
ment; so the singing and talking presently ceased; 
which so delighted the parrot that he cursed himself 
hoarse for joy. 

Then the male members of the party moved to 
the forecastle, to smoke and gossip. There were 
several old steamboatmen along, and I learned from 
them a great deal of what had been happening to my 
former river friends during my long absence. I 
learned that a pilot whom I used to steer for is 
become a spiritualist, and for more than fifteen 
years has been receiving a letter every week from a 
deceased relative, through a New York spiritualistic 
medium named Manchester — postage graduated by 
distance; from the local post-office in Paradise to 
New York, five dollars; from New York to St. Louis, 
three cents. I remember Mr. Manchester very well. 
I called on him once, ten years ago, with a couple of 
friends, one of whom wished to inquire after a de- 
ceased uncle. This uncle had lost his life in a 
peculiarly violent and unusual way, half a dozen 
years before: a cyclone blew him some three miles 
and knocked a tree down with him which was four 
feet through at the butt and sixty-five feet high. 

386 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

He did not survive this triumph. At the stance just 
referred to, my friend questioned his late uncle, 
through Mr. Manchester, and the late uncle wrote 
down his replies, using Mr. Manchester's hand and 
pencil for that purpose. The following is a fair 
example of the questions asked, and also of the sloppy- 
twaddle in the way of answers furnished by Man- 
chester under the pretense that it came from the 
specter. If this man is not the paltriest fraud that 
lives, I owe him an apology: 

Question, Where are you? 

Answer. In the spirit world. 

Q. Are you happy? 

A. Very happy. Perfectly happy. 

Q. How do you amuse yourself? 

A. Conversation with friends, and other spirits. 

Q. What else? 

A. Nothing else. Nothing else is necessary. 

Q. What do you talk about? 

A. About how happy we are; and about friends 
left behind in the earth, and how to influence them 
for their good. 

Q. When your friends in the earth all get to the 
spirit land, what shall you have to talk about then? 
— ^nothing but about how happy you all are? 

No reply. It is explained that spirits will not 
answer frivolous questions. 

Q. How is it that spirits that are content to 
spend an eternity in frivolous employments, and 
accept it as happiness, are so fastidious about frivo- 
lous questions upon the subject ? 

No reply. 

387 



Q 



MARK TWAIN 

Would you like to come back? 



A. No. 

Q. Would you say that under oath? 

A. Yes. 

Q. What do you eat there? 

A. We do not eat. 

Q. What do you drink? 

A. We do not drink. 

Q. What do you smoke? 

A. We do not smoke. 

Q. What do you read? 

A. We do not read. 

Q. Do all the good people go to your place? 

A. Yes. 

Q. You know my present way of life. Can you 
suggest any additions to it, in the way of crime, that 
will reasonably insure my going to some other place? 

No reply. 

Q. When did you die? 

A. I did not die; I passed away. 

Q. Very well, then; when did you pass away? 
How long have you been in the spirit land? 

A. We have no measurements of time here. 

Q. Though you may be indifferent and imcertain 
as to dates and times in your present condition and 
environment, this has nothing to do with your former 
condition. You had dates then. One of these is 
what I ask for. You departed on a certain day in 
a certain year. Is not this true? 

a'. Yes. 

Q. Then name the day of the month. 

(Much fumbling with pencil, on the part of the 
388 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

medium, accompanied by violent spasmodic jerkings 
of his head and body, for some httle time. Finally, 
explanation to the effect that spirits often forget 
dates, such things being without importance to 
them.) 

Q. Then this one has actually forgotten the date 
of its translation to the spirit land? 

This was granted to be the case. 

Q. This is very curious. Well, then, what year 
was it? 

(More fumbling, jerking, idiotic spasms, on the 
part of the medium. Finally, explanation to the 
effect that the spirit has forgotten the year.) 

Q. This is indeed stupendous. Let me put one 
more question, one last question, to you, before we 
part to meet no more; for even if I failed to avoid 
your asylum, a meeting there will go for nothing as 
a meeting, since by that time you will easily have 
forgotten me and my name. Did you die a natural 
death, or were you cut off by a catastrophe ? 

A. (After a long hesitation and many throes and 
spasms.) Natural death. 

This ended the interview. My friend told the 
medium that when his relative was in this poor 
world, he was endowed with an extraordinary in- 
tellect and an absolutely defectless memory, and it 
seemed a great pity that he had not been allowed 
to keep some shred of these for his amusement in the 
realms of everlasting contentment, and for the 
amazement and admiration of the rest of the popu- 
lation there. 

This man had plenty of cHents — has plenty yet. 
389 



MARK TWAIN 

He receives letters from spirits located in every part 
of the spirit world, and delivers them all over this 
country through the United States mail. These 
letters are filled with advice — advice from "spirits" 
who don't know as much as a tadpole — and this 
advice is religiously followed by the receivers. One 
of these clients was a man whom the spirits (if one 
may thus plurally describe the ingenious Man- 
chester) were teaching how to contrive an improved 
railway car- wheel. It is coarse employment for a 
spirit, but it is higher and wholesomer activity than 
talking forever about ''how happy we are." 



CHAPTER XLIX 

EPISODES IN PILOT LIFE 

IN the course of the tugboat gossip, it came out 
that out of every five of my former friends who 
had quitted the river, four had chosen farming as 
an occupation. Of course this was not because they 
were pecuHarly gifted agriculturally, and thus more 
likely to succeed as farmers than in other industries : 
the reason for their choice must be traced to some 
other source. Doubtless they chose farming because 
that life is private and secluded from irruptions of 
undesirable strangers — ^like the pilot-house hermit- 
age. And doubtless they also chose it because on a 
thousand nights of black storm and danger they 
had noted the twinkling lights of solitary farm- 
houses, as the boat swung by, and pictured to them- 
selves the serenity and security and coziness of 
such refuges at such times, and so had by and by 
come to dream of that retired and peaceful life as 
the one desirable thing to long for, anticipate, earn, 
and at last enjoy. 

But I did not learn that any of these pilot-farmers 
had astonished anybody with their successes. Their 
farms do not support them: they support their 
farms. The pilot-farmer disappears from the river 
annually, about the breaking of spring, and is seen 

391 



MARK TWAIN 

no more till next frost. Then he appears again, in 
damaged homespun, combs the hayseed out of his 
hair, and takes a pilot-house berth for the winter. 
In this way he pays the debts which his farming 
has achieved during the agricultural season. So his 
river bondage is but half broken ; he is still the river's 
slave the hardest half of the year. 

One of these men bought a farm, but did not 
retire to it. He knew a trick worth tv/o of that. 
He did not propose to pauperize his farm by apply- 
ing his personal ignorance to working it. No, he 
put the farm into the hands of an agricultural expert 
to be worked on shares — out of every three loads 
of corn the expert to have two and the pilot the 
third. But at the end of the season the pilot re- 
ceived no com. The expert explained that his share 
was not reached. The farm produced only two loads. 

Some of the pilots whom I had known had had 
adventures — the outcome fortunate, sometimes, but 
not in all cases. Captain Montgomery, whom I had 
steered for when he was a pilot, commanded the 
Confederate fleet in the great battle before Memphis ; 
when his vessel went down, he swam ashore, fought 
his way through a squad of soldiers, and made a 
gallant and narrow escape. He was always a cool 
man; nothing could disturb his serenity. Once 
when he was captain of the Crescent City, I was 
brnging the boat into port at New Orleans, and 
momently expecting orders from the hurricane-deck, 
but received none. I had stopped the wheels, and 
there my authority and responsibility ceased. It 
was evening — dim twilight; the captain's hat was 

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LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

perched upon the big bell, and I supposed the in- 
tellectual end of the captain was in it, but such was 
not the case. The captain was very strict ; therefore 
I knew better than to touch a bell without orders. 
My duty was to hold the boat steadily on her calam- 
itous course, and leave the consequences to take 
care of themselves — ^which I did. So we went 
plowing past the stems of steamboats and getting 
closer and closer — the crash was bound to come 
very soon — and still that hat never budged; for alas! 
the captain was napping in the texas. . . . Things 
were becoming exceedingly nervous and uncomfort- 
able. It seemed to me that the captain was not 
going to appear in time to see the entertainment. 
But he did. Just as we were walking into the stem 
of a steamboat, he stepped out on deck, and said, 
with heavenly serenity, "Set her back on both" — 
which I did; but a trifle late, however, for the next 
moment we went smashing through that other boat's 
flimsy outer works with a most prodigious racket. 
The captain never said a word to me about the 
matter afterward, except to remark that I had done 
right, and that he hoped I would not hesitate to act 
in the same way again in like circumstances. 

One of the pilots whom I had known when I was 
on the river had died a very honorable death. His 
boat caught fire, and he remained at the wheel until 
he got her safe to land. Then he went out over the 
breast-board with his clothing in flames, and was 
the last person to get ashore. He died from his 
injuries in the course of two or three hours, and his 
was the only life lost. 

393 



MARK TWAIN 

The history of Mississippi piloting affords six or 
seven instances of this sort of martyrdom, and half 
a hundred instances of escape from a like fate which 
came within a second or two of being fatally too 
late; but there is no instance of a pilot deserting his 
post to save his life while, by remaining and sacrificing 
it, he might secure other lives from destruction. It is 
well worth while to set down this noble fact, and 
well worth while to put it in italics, too. 

The **cub'* pilot is early admonished to despise 
all perils connected with a pilot's calling, and to 
prefer any sort of death to the deep dishonor of 
deserting his post while there is any possibility of his 
being useful in it. And so effectively are these 
admonitions inculcated that even young and but 
half-tried pilots can be depended upon to stick to 
the wheel, and die there when occasion requires. 
In a Memphis graveyard is buried a young fellow 
who perished at the wheel a great many years ago, 
in White River, to save the lives of other men. He 
said to the captain that if the fire would give him 
time to reach a sand-bar, some distance away, all 
could be saved, but that to land against the bluff 
bank of the river would be to insure the loss of many 
lives. He reached the bar and grounded the boat 
in shallow water; but by that time the flames had 
closed around him, and in escaping through them he 
was fatally burned. He had been urged to fly 
sooner, but had replied as became a pilot to reply: 

**I will not go. If I go, nobody will be saved. If 
I stay, no one will be lost but me. I will stay." 

There were two himdred persons on board, and no 
394 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

life was lost but the pilot's. There used to be a 
monument to this young fellow in that Memphis 
graveyard. While we tarried in Memphis on our 
down trip, I started out to look for it, but our time 
was so brief that I was obliged to turn back before 
my object was accomplished. 

The tugboat gossip informed me that Dick Kennet 
was dead — ^blown up, near Memphis, and killed; 
that several others whom I had known had fallen in 
the war — one or two of them shot down at the wheel ; 
that another and very particular friend, whom I had 
steered many trips for, had stepped out of his house 
in New Orleans, one night years ago, to collect some 
money in a remote part of the city, and had never 
been seen again — was murdered and thrown into the 
river, it was thought ; that Ben Thornburg was dead 
long ago; also his wild "cub," whom I used to 
quarrel with all through every daylight watch. A 
heedless, reckless creature he was, and always in hot 
water, always in mischief. An Arkansas passenger 
brought an enormous bear aboard one day, and 
chained him to a life-boat on the hurricane-deck. 
Thomburg's "cub" could not rest till he had gone 
there and tmchained the bear, to "see what he 
would do." He was promptly gratified. The bear 
chased him around and around the deck, for miles 
and miles, with two hundred eager faces grinning 
through the railings for audience, and finally snatched 
off the lad's coat-tail and went into the texas to 
chew it. The off-watch turned out with alacrity, 
and left the bear in sole possession. He presently 
grew lonesome, and started out for recreation. He 

395 



MARK TWAIN 

ranged the whole boat — ^visited every part of it, with 
an advance-guard of fleeing people in front of him 
and a voiceless vacancy behind him; and when his 
owner captured him at last, those two were the only 
visible beings anywhere; everybody else was in 
hiding, and the boat was a soHtude. 

I was told that one of my pilot friends fell dead at 
the wheel, from heart disease, in 1869. The cap- 
tain was on the roof at the time. He saw the boat 
breaking for the shore; shouted, and got no answer; 
ran up, and found the pilot lying dead on the floor. 

Mr. Bixby had been blown up in Madrid Bend; 
was not injured, but the other pilot was lost. 

George Ritchie had been blown up near Memphis 
— blown into the river from the wheel, and disabled. 
The water was very cold; he clung to a cotton-bale 
— mainly with his teeth — and floated imtil nearly 
exhausted, when he was rescued by some deck-hands 
who were on a piece of the wreck. They tore open 
the bale and packed him in the cotton, and warmed 
the life back into him, and got him safe to Memphis. 
He is one of Bixby's pilots on the Baton Rouge now. 

Into the life of a steamboat clerk, now dead, had 
dropped a bit of romance — somewhat grotesque ro- 
mance, but romance nevertheless. When I knew him 
he was a shiftless young spendthrift, boisterous, 
good-hearted, full of careless generosities, and pretty 
conspicuously promising to fool his possibilities 
away early, and come to nothing. In a Western city 
lived a rich and childless old foreigner and his wife; 
and in their family was a comely young girl — sort of 
friend, sort of servant. The young clerk of whom 

396 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

I have been speaking — whose name was not George 
Johnson, but who shall be called George Johnson for 
the purposes of this narrative — got acquainted with 
this young girl, and they sinned; and the old for- 
eigner found them out and rebuked them. Being 
ashamed, they lied, and said they were married; that 
they had been privately married. Then the old 
foreigner's hurt was healed, and he forgave and 
blessed them. After that, they were able to con- 
tinue their sin without concealment. By and by the 
foreigner's wife died ; and presently he followed after 
her. Friends of the family assembled to mourn; and 
among the mourners sat the two young sinners. 
The will was opened and solemnly read. It be- 
queathed every penny of that old man's great wealth 
to Mrs. George Johnson! 

And there was no such person. The young sinners 
fled forth then and did a very foolish thing : married 
themselves before an obscure justice of the peace, 
and got him to antedate the thing. That did no sort 
of good. The distant relatives flocked in and ex- 
posed the fraudful date with extreme suddenness and 
surprising ease, and carried off the fortime, leaving 
the Johnsons very legitimately, and legally, and 
irrevocably chained together in honorable marriage, 
but with not so much as a penny to bless themselves 
withal. Such are the actual facts ; and not all novels 
have for a base so telling a situation. 



CHAPTER L 



THE ''original JACOBS" 



WE had some talk about Captain Isaiah Sel- 
lers, now many years dead. He was a fine 
man, a high-minded man, and greatly respected both 
ashore and on the river. He was very tall, well built, 
and handsome; and in his old age — as I remember 
him — his hair was as black as an Indian's, and his 
eye and hand were as strong and steady and his 
nerve and judgment as firm and clear as anybody's, 
young or old, among the fraternity of pilots. He was 
the patriarch of the craft; he had been a keelboat 
pilot before the day of steamboats ; and a steamboat 
pilot before any other steamboat pilot, still surviving 
at the time I speak of, had ever turned a wheel. 
Consequently, his brethren held him in the sort of 
awe in which illustrious survivors of a bygone age 
are always held by their associates. He knew how 
he was regarded, and perhaps this fact added some 
trifle of stiffening to his natural dignity, which had 
been sufficiently stiff in its original state. 

He left a diary behind him; but apparently it did 
not date back to his first steamboat trip, which 
was said to be 1811, the year the first steamboat 
disturbed the waters of the Mississippi. At the 
time of his death a correspondent of the St. Louis 

398 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

Republican culled the following items from the 
diary: 

In February, 1825, he shipped on board the steamer Rambler ^ 
at Florence, Ala., and made during that year three trips to New 
Orleans and back — ^this on the General Carrol, between Nashville 
and New Orleans. It was during his stay on this boat that 
Captain Sellers introduced the tap of the bell as a signal to heave 
the lead; previous to which time it was the custom for the pilot 
to speak to the men below when soundings were wanted. The 
proximity of the forecastle to the pilot-house, no doubt, rendered 
this an easy matter; but how different on one of our palaces of 
the present day! 

In 1827 we find him on board the President, a boat of two 
hundred and eighty-five tons burden, and plying between Smith- 
land and New Orleans. Thence he joined the Jubilee in 1828, 
and on this boat he did his first piloting in the St. Louis trade; 
his first watch extending from Herculaneum to St. Genevieve. 
On May 26, 1836, he completed and left Pittsburg in charge of 
the steamer Prairie, a boat of four hundred tons, and the first 
steamer with a stateroom cabin ever seen at St. Louis. In 1857 he 
introduced the signal for meeting boats, and which has, with 
some slight change, been the universal custom of this day; in 
fact, is rendered obligatory by act of Congress. 

As general items of river history, we quote the following mar- 
ginal notes from his general log: 

In March, 1825, General Lafayette left New Orleans for 
St. Louis on the low-pressure steamer Natchez. 

In January, 1828, twenty-one steamers left the New Orleans 
wharf to celebrate the occasion of General Jackson's visit to 
that city. 

In 1830 the North American made the run from New Orleans 
to Memphis in six days — best time on record to that date. It 
has since been made in two days and ten hours. 

In 1 83 1 the Red River cut-off formed. 

In 1832 steamer Hudson made the run from White River to 
Helena, a distance of seventy-five miles, in twelve hours. This 
was the source of much talk and speculation among parties 
directly interested. 

In 1839 Great Horseshoe cut-off formed. 

399 



MARK TWAIN 

Up to the present time, a term of thirty-five years, we ascer- 
tain, by reference to the diary, he has made four hundred and 
sixty round trips to New Orleans, which gives a distance of one 
million one hundred and four thousand miles, or an average of 
eighty-six miles a day. 

Whenever Captain Sellers approached a body of 
gossiping pilots, a chill fell there, and talking ceased. 
For this reason: whenever six pilots were gathered 
together, there would always be one or two newly 
fledged ones in the lot, and the elder ones would be 
always "showing off" before these poor fellows; 
making them sorrowftilly feel how callow they were, 
how recent their nobility, and how humble their 
degree, by talking largely and vaporously of old- 
time experiences on the river; always making it a 
point to date everything back as far as they could, 
so as to make the new men feel their newness to the 
sharpest degree possible, and envy the old stagers in 
the like degree. And how these complacent bald- 
heads would swell, and brag, and lie, and date back — 
ten, fifteen, twenty years, and how they did enjoy 
the effect produced upon the marveling and envying 
youngsters ! 

And perhaps just at this happy stage of the pro- 
ceedings, the stately figure of Captain Isaiah Sellers, 
that real and only genuine Son of Antiquity, would 
drift solemnly into the midst. Imagine the size of 
the silence that would result on the instant! And 
imagine the feelings of those baldheads, and the 
exultation of their recent audience, when the ancient 
captain would begin to drop casual and indifferent 
remarks of a reminiscent nature — about islands that 

400 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

had disappeared, and cut-offs that had been made, 
a generation before the oldest baldhead in the 
company had ever set his foot in a pilot-house! 

Many and many a time did this ancient mariner 
appear on the scene in the above fashion, and spread 
disaster and humiliation around him. If one might 
believe the pilots, he always dated his islands back 
to the misty dawn of river history; and he never 
used the same island twice ; and never did he employ 
an island that still existed, or give one a name which 
anybody present was old enough to have heard of 
before. If you might believe the pilots, he was 
always conscientiously particular about little de- 
tails; never spoke of ''the state of Mississippi," for 
instance — no, he would say, ''When the state of 
Mississippi was where Arkansas now is"; and would 
never speak of Louisiana or Missoiui in a general 
way, and leave an incorrect impression on your 
mind — no, he would say, "When Louisiana was up 
the river farther," or "When Missouri was on the 
Illinois side." 

The old gentleman was not of literary turn or 
capacity, but he used to jot down brief paragraphs 
of plain, practical information about the river, and 
sign them "Mark Twain," and give them to the 
New Orleans Picayune. They related to the stage 
and condition of the river, and were acctu-ate and 
valuable ; and thus far they contained no poison. But 
in speaking of the stage of the river to-day at a given 
point, the captain was pretty apt to drop in a little 
remark about this being the first time he had seen 
the water so high or so low at that particular point 

4.01 



MARK TWAIN 

in forty-nine years; and now and then he would 
mention Island so-and-so, and follow it, in paren- 
theses, with some such observation as "disappeared 
in 1807, if I remember rightly." In these antique 
interjections lay poison and bitterness for the other 
old pilots, and they used to chaff the "Mark Twain" 
paragraphs with unsparing mockery. 

It so chanced that one of these paragraphs^ became 
the text for my first newspaper article. I bur- 
lesqued it broadly, very broadly, stringing my fan- 
tastics out to the extent of eight hundred or a thou- 
sand words. I was a "cub" at the time. I showed 
my performance to some pilots, and they eagerly 
rushed it into print in the New Orleans True Delta. 
It was a great pity; for it did nobody any worthy 
service, and it sent a pang deep into a good man's 
heart. There was no malice in my rubbish; but it 
laughed at the captain. It laughed at a man to 
whom such a thing was new and strange and dread- 
ful. I did not know then, though I do now, that 
there is no suffering comparable with that which a 
private person feels when he is for the first time 
pilloried in print. 

Captain Sellers did me the honor to profoimdly 

^ The original MS. of it, in the captain's own hand, has been sent 
to me from New Orieans. It reads as follows: 

" ViCKSBURG, May 4, 1859. 
"My opinion for the benefit of the citizens of New Orleans: The 
water is higher this far up than it has been since 1815. My opinion 
is that the water will be 4 feet deep in Canal Street before the first 
of next June. Mrs. Turner's plantation at the head of Big Black 
Island is all under water, and it has not been since 181 5. 

"I. Sellers." 
402 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

detest me from that day forth. When I say he did 
me the honor, I am not using empty words. It 
was a very real honor to be in the thoughts of so 
great a man as Captain Sellers, and I had wit enough 
to appreciate it and be proud of it. It was dis- 
tinction to be loved by such a man; but it was a 
much greater distinction to be hated by him, be- 
cause he loved scores of people ; but he didn't sit up 
nights to hate anybody but me. 

He never printed another paragraph while he 
lived, and he never again signed ''Mark Twain" to 
anything. At the time that the telegraph brought 
the news of his death, I was on the Pacific coast. 
I was a fresh, new journalist, and needed a nom de 
guerre; so I confiscated the ancient mariner's dis- 
carded one, and have done my best to make it 
remain what it was in his hands — a sign and symbol 
and warrant that whatever is found in its company 
may be gambled on as being the petrified truth. 
How I've succeeded, it would not be modest in me 
to say. 

The captain had an honorable pride in his pro- 
fession and an abiding love for it. He ordered his 
monimient before he died, and kept it near him 
until he did die. It stands over his grave now, 
in Belief ontaine Cemetery, St. Louis. It is his 
image, in marble, standing on duty at the pilot- 
wheel; and worthy to stand and confront criticism, 
for it represents a man who in life would have 
stayed there till he burned to a cinder, if duty re- 
quired it. 

The finest thing we saw on our whole Mississippi 
403 



MARK TWAIN 

trip, we saw as we approached New Orleans in the 
steam-tug. This was the curving frontage of the 
Crescent City Ht up with the white glare of five 
miles of electric lights. It was a wonderful sight, 
and very beautiful. 



404 



CHAPTER LI 

REMINISCENCES 

WE left for St. Louis in the City of Baton 
Rouge, on a delightfully hot day, but with the 
main purpose of my visit but lamely accomplished. 
I had hoped to hunt up and talk with a himdred 
steamboatmen, but got so pleasantly involved in the 
social life of the town that I got nothing more than 
mere five-minute talks with a couple of dozen of the 
craft. 

I was on the bench of the pilot-house when we 
backed out and ''straightened up" for the start — 
the boat pausing for a ''good ready," in the old- 
fashioned wa3^ and the black smoke piling out of the 
chimneys equally in the old-fashioned way. Then 
we began to gather momentum, and presently were 
fairly under way and booming along. It was all as 
natural and familiar — and so were the shoreward 
sights — as if there had been no break in my river 
life. There was a "cub," and I judged that he 
would take the wheel now; and he did. Captain 
Bixby stepped into the pilot-house. Presently the 
cub closed up on the rank of steamships. He made 
me nervous, for he allowed too much water to show 
between our boat and the ships. I knew quite well 
what was going to happen, because I could date back 

405 



MARK TWAIN 

in my own life and inspect the record. The captain 
looked on, during a silent half -minute, then took the 
wheel himself, and crowded the boat in, till she went 
scraping along within a hand-breadth of the ships. 
It was exactly the favor which he had done me, 
about a quarter of a century before, in that same 
spot, the first time I ever steamed out of the port 
of New Orleans. It was a very great and sincere 
pleasure to me to see the thing repeated — with some- 
body else as victim. 

We made Natchez (three hundred miles) in twenty- 
two hours and a half — much the swiftest passage I 
have ever made over that piece of water. 

The next morning I came on with the four-o'clock 
watch, and saw Ritchie successfully run half a dozen 
crossings in a fog, using for his guidance the marked 
chart devised and patented by Bixby himself. This 
sufficiently evidenced the great value of the chart. 

By and by, when the fog began to clear off, I 
noticed that the reflection of a tree in the smooth 
water of an overflowed bank, six hundred yards 
away, was stronger and blacker than the ghostly 
tree itself. The faint, spectral trees, dimly glimpsed 
through the shredding fog, were very pretty things 
to see. 

We had a heavy thunder-storm at Natchez, an- 
other at Vicksburg, and still another about fifty 
miles below Memphis. They had an old-fashioned 
energy which had long been unfamiliar to me. This 
third storm was accompanied by a raging wind. 
We tied up to the bank when we saw the tempest 
coming, and everybody left the pilot-house but me. 

406 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

The wind bent the young trees down, exposing the 
pale underside of the leaves; and gust after gust 
followed, in quick succession, thrashing the branches 
violently up and down, and to this side and that, 
and creating swift waves of alternating green and 
white, according to the side of the leaf that was 
exposed, and these waves raced after each other as 
do their kind over a wind-tossed field of oats. No 
color that was visible anywhere was quite natural — 
all tints were charged with a leaden tinge from the 
solid cloud-bank overhead. The river was leaden, 
all distances the same; and even the far-reaching 
ranks of combing whitecaps were dully shaded by 
the dark, rich atmosphere through which their 
sw^arming legions marched. The thunder-peals were 
constant and deafening ; explosion followed explosion 
with but inconsequential intervals between, and the 
reports grew steadily sharper and higher-keyed, and 
more trying to the ear; the lightning was as diligent 
as the thunder, and produced effects which en- 
chanted the eye and set electric ecstasies of mixed 
delight and apprehension shivering along every nerve 
in the body in unintermittent procession. The rain 
poured down in amazing volume; the ear-splitting 
thunder-peals broke nearer and nearer; the wind 
increased in fury and began to wrench off boughs 
and tree-tops and send them sailing away through 
space; the pilot-house fell to rocking and straining 
and cracking and surging, and I went down in the 
hold to see what time it was. 

People boast a good deal about Alpine thunder- 
storms; but the storms which I have had the luck to 

407 



MARK TWAIN 

see in the Alps were not the equals of some which 
I have seen in the Mississippi valley. I may not 
have seen the Alps do their best, of course, and if 
they can beat the Mississippi, I don't wish to. 

On this up -trip I saw a little towhead (infant 
island) half a mile long, which had been formed 
dirring the past nineteen years. Since there was so 
much time to spare that nineteen years .of it could 
be devoted to the construction of a mere towhead, 
where was the use, originally, in rushing this whole 
globe through in six days? It is likely that if more 
time had been taken, in the first place, the world 
would have been made right, and this ceaseless 
improving and repairing would not be necessary 
now. But if you hurry a world or a house, you are 
nearly sure to find out by and by that you have 
left out a towhead, or a broom-closet, or some other 
little convenience, here and there, which has got 
to be supplied, no matter how much expense or 
vexation it may cost. 

We had a succession of black nights, going up the 
river, and it was observable that whenever we 
landed, and suddenly inundated the trees with the 
intense sunburst of the electric light, a certain curious 
effect was always produced ; hundred of birds flocked 
instantly out from the masses of shining green 
foliage, and went careering hither and thither 
through the white rays, and often a song-bird tuned 
up and fell to singing. We judged that they mistook 
this superb artificial day for the genuine article. 

We had a delightful trip in that thoroughly well- 
ordered steamer, and regretted that it was accom- 

408 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

plished so speedily. By means of diligence and 
activity, we managed to hunt out nearly all the old 
friends. One was missing, however; he went to his 
reward, whatever it was, two years ago. But I 
found out all about him. His case helped me to 
realize how lasting can be the effect of a very trifling 
occurrence. When he was an apprentice-blacksmith 
in our village, and I a school-boy, a couple of young 
Englishmen came to the town and sojourned awhile ; 
and one day they got themselves up in cheap royal 
finery and did the Richard HI. sword-fight with 
maniac energy and prodigious powwow, in the pres- 
ence of the village boys. This blacksmith cub was 
there, and the histrionic poison entered his bones. 
This vast, lumbering, ignorant, dull-witted lout was 
stage-struck, and irrecoverably. He disappeared, 
and presently turned up in St. Louis. I ran across 
him there, by and by. He was standing musing on 
a street-comer, with his right hand on his hip, the 
thumb of his left supporting his chin, face bowed and 
frowning, slouch hat pulled down over his forehead — 
imagining himself to be Othello or some such char- 
acter, and imagining that the passing crowd marked 
his tragic bearing and were awe-struck. 

I joined him, and tried to get him down out of 
the clouds, but did not succeed. However, he cas- 
ually informed me, presently, that he was a mem- 
ber of the Walnut Street Theater company — and he 
tried to say it with indifference, but the indifference 
was thin, and a mighty exultation showed through 
it. He said he w^as cast for a part in "Julius Caesar," 
for that night, and if I should come I would see him. 

409 



MARK TWAIN 

If I should come! I said I wouldn't miss it if I 
were dead. 

I went away stupefied with astonishment, and 
saying to myself, "How strange it is! we always 
thought this fellow a fool ; yet the moment he comes 
to a great city, where intelligence and appreciation 
abound, the talent concealed in this shabby napkin 
is at once discovered, and promptly welcomed and 
honored.** 

But I came away from the theater that night dis- 
appointed and offended; for I had had no glimpse of 
my hero, and his name was not in the bills. I met 
him on the street the next morning, and before I 
could speak, he asked: 

"Did you see me?" 

"No, you weren't there." 

He looked surprised and disappointed. He said: 

"Yes, I was. Indeed, I was. I was a Roman 
soldier." 

"Which one?'* 

"Why, didn't you see them Roman soldiers that 
stood back there in a rank, and sometimes marched 
in procession around the stage?" 

"Do you mean the Roman army? — those six san- 
daled roustabouts in nightshirts, with tin shields and 
helmets, that marched around treading on each 
other's heels, in charge of a spider-legged consump- 
tive dressed like themselves?" 

"That's it! that's it! I was one of them Roman 
soldiers. I was the next to the last one. A half a 
year ago I used to always be the last one; but I*ve 
been promoted.'* 

4ZO 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

Well, they told me that that poor fellow remained 
a Roman soldier to the last — a matter of thirty-four 
years. Sometimes they cast him for a "speaking 
part," but not an elaborate one. He could be 
trusted to go and say, "My lord, the carriage waits," 
but if they ventured to add a sentence or two to 
this, his memory felt the strain and he was likely 
to miss fire. Yet, poor devil, he had been patiently 
studying the part of Hamlet for more than thirty 
years, and he Hved and died in the belief that some 
day he woiild be invited to play it ! 

And this is what came of that fleeting visit of 
those yoimg Englishmen to our village such ages and 
ages ago! What noble horseshoes this man might 
have made, but for those Englishmen; and what an 
inadequate Roman soldier he did make! 

A day or two after we reached St. Louis, I was 
walking along Fourth Street when a grizzly-headed 
man gave a sort of start as he passed me, then 
stopped, came back, inspected me narrowly, with a 
clouding brow, and finally said with deep asperity: 

"Look here, have you got that drink yetV 

A maniac, I judged, at first. But all in a flash I 
recognized him. I made an effort to blush that 
strained every muscle in me, and answered as 
sweetly and winningly as ever I knew how: 

"Been a little slow, but am just this minute closing 
in on the place where they keep it. Come in and 
help!*' 

He softened, and said make it a bottle of cham- 
pagne and he was agreeable. He said he had seen my 
name in the papers, and had put all his affairs aside 

411 



MARK TWAIN 

and turned out, resolved to find me or die ; and make 
me answer that question satisfactorily, or kill me; 
though the most of his late asperity had been rather 
counterfeit than otherwise. 

This meeting brought back to me the St. Louis 
riots of about thirty years ago. I spent a week 
there, at that time, in a boarding-house, and had this 
young fellow for a neighbor across the hall. We saw 
some of the fightings and killings; and by and by 
we went one night to an armory where two hundred 
young men had met, upon call, to be armed and go 
forth against the rioters, under command of a military 
man. We drilled till about ten o'clock at night; 
then news came that the mob were in great force 
in the lower end of the town, and were sweeping 
everything before them. Our column moved at 
once. It was a very hot night, and my musket was 
very heavy. We marched and marched; and the 
nearer we approached the seat of war, the hotter I 
grew and the thirstier I got. I was behind my 
friend; so finally, I asked him to hold my musket 
while I dropped out and got a drink. Then I 
branched off and went home. I was not feeling any 
solicitude about him of course, because I knew he 
was so well armed now that he could take care of 
himself without any trouble. If I had had any 
doubts about that, I would have borrowed another 
musket for him. I left the city pretty early the 
next morning, and if this grizzled man had not hap- 
pened to encounter my name in the papers the other 
day in St. Louis, and felt moved to seek me out, I 
should have carried to my grave a heart-tortiu"ing 

412 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

uncertainty as to whether he ever got out of the 
riots all right or not. I ought to have inquired, 
thirty years ago; I know that. And I would have 
inquired, if I had had the muskets; but, in the 
circumstances, he seemed better fixed to conduct the 
investigations than I was. 

One Monday, near the time of our visit to St. 
Louis, the Globe-Democrat came out with a couple of 
pages of Sunday statistics, whereby it appeared that 
119,448 St. Louis people attended the morning and 
evening church services the day before, and 23,102 
children attended Sunday-school . Thus 142,550 per- 
sons, out of the city's total of 400,000 population, 
respected the day religious wise. I found these sta- 
tistics, in a condensed form, in a telegram of the 
Associated Press, and preserved them. They made 
it apparent that St. Louis was in a higher state of 
grace than she could have claimed to be in my 
time. But now that I canvass the figures narrowly, 
I suspect that the telegraph mutilated them. It can- 
not be that there are more than 150,000 Catholics 
in the town; the other 250,000 must be classified as 
Protestants. Out of these 250,000, according to this 
questionable telegram, only 26,362 attended church 
and Sunday-school, while out of the 150,000 Cath- 
olics, 116,188 went to church and Sunday-school. 



CHAPTER LII 

A BURNING BRAND 

ALL at once the thought came into my mind, **I 
Jy have not sought out Mr. Brown." 

Upon that text I desire to depart from the direct 
line of my subject and make a Httle excursion. I 
wish to reveal a secret which I have carried with me 
nine years and which has become burdensome. 

Upon a certain occasion, nine years ago, I had 
said, with strong feeling, "If ever I see St. Louis 
again, I will seek out Mr. Brown, the great grain 
merchant, and ask of him the privilege of shaking 
him by the hand." 

The occasion and the circumstances were as fol- 
lows. A friend of mine, a clergyman, came one 
evening and said: 

"I have a most remarkable letter here, which I 
want to read to you, if I can do it without breaking 
down. I must preface it with some explanations, 
however. The letter is written by an ex-thief and 
ex- vagabond of the lowest origin and basest rearing, 
a man all stained with crime and steeped in igno- 
rance; but, thank God! v^th a mine of pure gold 
hidden away in him, as you shall see. His letter is 
written to a burglar named Williams, who is serving 
a nine -year term in a certain state prison, for 

414 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

burglary. Williams was a particularly daring bur- 
glar and plied that trade during a number of years; 
but he was caught at last and jailed, to await trial 
in a town where he had broken into a house at 
night, pistol in hand, and forced the owner to hand 
over to him eight thousand dollars in government 
bonds. Williams was not a common sort of person, 
by any means; he was a graduate of Harvard Col- 
lege and came of good New England stock. His 
father was a clergyman. While lying in jail, his 
health began to fail, and he was threatened with 
consumption. This fact, together with the oppor- 
tunity for reflection afforded by solitary confine- 
ment, had its eficct — ^its natiu*al effect. He fell into 
serious thought; his early training asserted itself 
with power, and wrought with strong influence upon 
his mind and heart. He put his old life behind him 
and became an earnest Christian. Some ladies in 
the town heard of this, visited him, and by their 
encouraging words supported him in his good reso- 
lutions and strengthened him to continue in his 
new life. The trial ended in his conviction and 
sentence to the state prison for the term of nine 
years, as I have before said. In the prison he 
became acquainted with the poor wretch referred to 
in the beginning of my talk, Jack Hunt, the writer 
of the letter which I am going to read. You will 
see that the acquaintanceship bore fruit for Hunt. 
When Hunt's time was out, he wandered to St. Louis; 
and from that place he wTote his letter to Williams. 
The letter got no further than the office of the 
prison warden, of course; prisoners are not often 

415 



MARK TWAIN 

allowed to receive letters from outside. The prison 
authorities read this letter, but did not destroy it. 
They had not the heart to do it. They read it to 
several persons, and eventually it fell into the hands 
of those ladies of whom I spoke a while ago. The 
other day I came across an old friend of mine — a 
clergyman — who had seen this letter, and was full 
of it. The mere remembrance of it so moved him 
that he could not talk of it without his voice break- 
ing. He promised to get a copy of it for me; and 
here it is — an exact copy, with all the imperfections 
of the original preserved. It has many slang ex- 
pressions in it — thieves' argot — ^but their meaning 
has been interlined, in parentheses, by the prison 
authorities : 

" St. Louis, June gth, 1872. 

*' Mr. W friend Charlie if i may call you so: i no you are 

surprised to get a letter from me, but i hope you won't be mad at 
my writing to you. i want to tell you my thanks for the way 
you talked to me when i was in prison — it has led me to try 
and be a better man; i guess you thought i did not cair for what 
you said, & at the first go off i didn't, but i noed you was a man 
who had don big work with good men & want no sucker, nor 
want gasing & all the boys knod it. 

" I used to think at nite what you said, & for it i nocked off 
swearing 5 months before my time was up, for i saw it want no 
good, nohow — the day my time was up you told me if i would 
shake the cross {quit stealing), & live on the square for 3 months, 
it would be the best job i ever done in my life. The state 
agent give me a ticket to here, & on the car i thought more of 
what you said to me, but didn't make up my mind. When we 
got to Chicago on the cars from there to here, I pulled off an old 
woman's leather {robbed her of her pocket-book) ; i hadn't no more 
than got it off when i wished i hadn't done it, for a while before 
that i made up my mind to be a square bloke, for 3 months on 
your word, but i forgot it when i saw the leather was a grip 

416 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

{easy to get) — ^but i kept clos to her & when she got out of the 
cars at a way place \ said, marm have you lost an3rthing? & 
she tumbled {discovered) her leather was of {gone) — is this it 
says i, giving it to her — ^well if you aint honest, says she, but 
i hadn't got cheak enough to stand that sort of talk, so i left 
her in a hurry. When i got here i had $i and 25 cents left & i 
didn't get no work for 3 days as i aint strong enough for roust 
about on a steam bote {for a deck-hand) — ^The afternoon of the 
3d day I spent my last 10 cents for 2 moons {large, round sea- 
biscuit) & cheese & i felt pretty rough & was thinking i would 
have to go on the dipe {picking pockets) again, when i th^^aght 
of what you once said about a fellows calling on the Lord when 
he was in hard luck, & i thought i would try it once anyhow, 
but when i tryed it i got stuck on the start, & all i could get off 
wos, Lord give a poor fellow a chance to square it for 3 months 
for Christ's sake, amen ; & i kept a thinking it over and over as 
i went along — about an hour after that i was in 4th St. & this 
is what happened & is the cause of my being where i am now 
& about which i will tell you before i get done writing. As i 
was walking along i herd a big noise & saw a horse running 
away with a carriage with 2 children in it, and i grabed up a 
peace of box cover from the sidewalk & run in the middle of the 
street, & when the horse came up i smashed him over the head 
as hard as i could drive — the bord split to peces & the horse 
checked up a Httle & i grabbed the reigns & pulled his head 
down until he stopped — the gentleman what owned him came 
running up & soon as he saw the children were all rite, he shook 
hands with me & gave me a $50 green back, & my asking the 
Lord to help me come into my head, & i was so thimderstruck 
i couldn't drop the reigns nor say nothing — ^he saw something 
was up, & coming back to me said, my boy are you hurt? & the 
thought come into my head just then to ask him for work; & i 
asked him to take back the bill and give me a job — says he, jump 
in here & lets talk about it, but keep the money — he asked me if i 
could take care of horses & i said yes, for i used to hang roimd 
livery stables & often would help clean & drive horses, he told 
me he wanted a man for that work, & would give me $16. a month 
& bord me. You bet i took that chance at once, that nite 
in my little room over the stable i sat a long time thinking over 
my past life & of what had just happened & i just got down 
on my nees & thanked the Lord for the job & to help me to 

417 



MARK TWAIN 

square it, & to bless you for putting me up to it, & the next morn- 
ing i done it again & got me some new togs (clothes) & a bible 
for i made up my miiid after what the Lord had done for me i 
would read the bible every nite and morning, & ask him to keep 
an eye on me. When I had been there about a week Mr Brown 
(that's his name) came in my room one nite & saw me reading 
the bible — he asked n->e if i was a Christian & i told him no — ^he 
asked me how it was i read the bible instead of papers & books 
— Well Charlie i thought i had better give him a square deal in 
the start, so i told him all about my being in prison & about 
you, & how i had almost done give up looking for work & how 
the Lord got me the job when i asked him; & the only way i 
had to pay him back was to read the bible & square it, & i asked 
him to give me a chance for 3 months — ^he talked to me like a 
father for a long time, & told me i could stay & then i felt better 
than ever i had done in my life, for i had given Mr. BrowTi a 
fair start with me & now i didn't fear no one giving me a back 
cap {exposing his past life) & running me off the job — the next 
morning he called me into the library & gave me another square 
talk, & advised me to study some every day, & he would help 
me one or 2 hours every nite, & he gave me a Arithmetic, a 
spelling book, a Geography & and a writing book, & he hers me 
every nite — ^he lets me come into the house to prayers every 
morning, & got me put in a bible class in the Sunday School which 
i likes very much for it helps me to understand my bible better. 
" Now, Charlie the 3 months on the square are up 2 months 
ago, & as you said, it is the best job i ever did in my hfe, & i 
commenced another of the same sort right away, only it is to 
God helping me to last a lifetime Charlie — i wrote this letter 
to tell you i do think God has forgiven my sins & herd your 
prayers, for you told me you should pray for me — i no i love 
to read his word & tell him all my troubles & he helps me i know 
for i have plenty of chances to steal but i don't feel to as i once 
did & now i take more pleasure in going to church than to the 
theatre & that wasn't so once — our ministers and others often 
talk \\ith me & a month ago they wanted me to join the church, 
but i said no, not now, i may be mistaken in my feelings, i will 
wait awhile, but now i feel that God has called me & on the 
first Sunday in July i will join the church — dear friend i wish 
i could ^Tite to you as i feel, but i cant do it yet — you no i 
learned to read and write while in prisons & i aint got well 

418 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

enough along to write as i would talk; i no i aint spelled all the 
words rite in this & lots of other mistakes but you Vv^ill excuse 
it i no, for you no i was brought up in a poor house until i run 
away, & that i never new who my father and mother was £: i 
don't no my rite name, & i hope you wont be mad at me, but 
i have as much rite to one name as another & i have taken 
your name, for you wont use it when you get out i no, & you 
are the man i think most of in the world; so i hope you wont 
be mad — I am doing well, i put $io a month in bank with $25 
of the $50 — if you ever want any or all of it let me know, & it is 
yours, i wish you would let me send you some now. I send 
you with this a receipt for a year of Littles Living Age, i didn't 
now what you would like & i told Mr Brown & he said he 
thought you would like it — i wish i was nere you so i could send 
you chuck {refreshments) on holidays; it would spoil this weather 
from here, but i will send you a box next thanksgiving any way 
— next week Mr. Brown takes me into his store as lite porter & 
will advance me as soon as i know a little more — he keeps a 
big granary store, wholesale — i forgot to tell you of my mission 
school, Sunday school class — the school is in the Sunday after- 
noon, i went out two Sunday afternoons, and picked up seven 
kids {little boys) & got them to come in. Two of them new as 
much as i did & i had them put in a class where they could learn 
something, i don't no much myself, but as these kids cant 
read i get on nicely with them, i make sure of them by going 
after them every Sunday }4 hour before school time, i also got 
4 girls to come, tell Mack and Harry about me, if they will 
come out here when their time is up i will get them jobs at once. 
i hope you will excuse this long letter & all mistakes, i wish i 
could see you for i cant write as i would talk — i hope the warm 
weather is doing your lungs good — i was afraid when you was 
bleeding you would die — ^give my respects to ail the boys and tell 
them how i am doing — i am doing well and every one here treats 
me as kind as they can — Mr Brown is going to write to you 
sometime — i hope some day you will write to me, this letter is 

from your very true friend C W 

who you know as Jack Hunt. 
" I send you Mr Brown's card. Send my letter to him." 

Here was true eloquence; irresistible eloquence; 
and without a single grace or ornament to help it 

419 



MARK TWAIN 

out. I have seldom been so deeply stirred by any 
piece of writing. The reader of it halted, all the 
way through, on a lame and broken voice; yet he 
had tried to fortify his feeHngs by several private 
readings of the letter before ventiuing into company 
with it. He was practising upon me to see if there 
was any hope of his being able to read the document 
to his prayer-meeting with anything like a decent 
command over his feelings. The result was not 
promising. However, he determined to risk it; and 
did. He got through tolerably well; but his audi- 
ence broke down early, and stayed in that condition 
to the end. 

The fame of the letter spread through the town. 
A brother minister came and borrowed the manu- 
script, put it bodily into a sermon, preached the 
sermon to twelve hundred people on a Simday morn- 
ing, and the letter drowned them in their own tears. 
Then my friend put it into a sermon and went before 
his Sunday morning congregation with it. It scored 
another triumph. The house wept as one individual. 

My friend went on summer vacation up into the 
fishing regions of our northern British neighbors, and 
carried this sermon with him, since he might possibly 
chance to need a sermon. He was asked to preach 
one day. The Httle church was full. Among the 
people present were the late Dr. J. G. Holland, the 
late Mr. Seymour of the New York Times, Mr. Page, 
the philanthropist and temperance advocate, and, I 
think, Senator Frye of Maine. The marvelous letter 
did its wonted work; all the people were moved, all 
the people wept ; the tears flowed in a steady stream 

420 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

down Dr. Holland's cheeks, and nearly the same can 
e said with regard to all who were there. Mr. Page 
was so full of enthusiasm over the letter that he 
said he would not rest tmtil he made pilgrimage to 
that prison, and had speech with the man who had 
been able to inspire a fellow-unfortunate to write so 
priceless a tract. 

Ah, that tmlucky Page! — and another man. If 
they had only been in Jericho, that letter would have 
rung through the world and stirred all the hearts of 
all the nations for a thousand years to come, and 
nobody might ever have found out that it was the 
confoimdedest, brazenest, ingeniousest piece of fraud 
and humbuggery that was ever concocted to fool 
poor confiding mortals with ! 

The letter was a pure swindle, and that is the 
truth. And take it by and large, it was without a 
compeer among swindles. It was perfect, it was 
rounded, symmetrical, complete, colossal! 

The reader learns it at this point; but we didn't 
learn it till some miles and weeks beyond this stage 
of the affair. My friend came back from the woods, 
and he and other clergymen and lay missionaries 
began once more to inundate audiences with their 
tears and the tears of said audiences; I begged hard 
for permission to print the letter in a magazine and 
tell the watery story of its triumphs; numbers of 
people got copies of the letter, with permission to 
circulate them in writing, but not in print; copies 
were sent to the Sandwich Islands and other far 
regions. 

Charles Dudley Warner was at church, one day, 
421 



MARK TWAIN 

when the worn letter was read and wept over. At 
the church door, afterward, he dropped a peculiarly- 
cold iceberg down ths clergyman's back with the 
question : 

*'Do you know that letter to be genuine?" 

It was the first suspicion that had ever been voiced; 
but it had that sickening effect which first-uttered 
suspicions against one's idol always have. Some talk 
followed : 

*'Why — what should make you suspect that it 
isn't genuine?" 

"Nothing that I know of, except that it is too 
neat, and compact, and fluent, and nicely put to- 
gether for an ignorant person, an unpractised hand. 
I think it was done by an educated man." 

The literary artist had detected the literary ma- 
chinery. If you will look at the letter now, you will 
detect it yourself — it is observable in every line. 

Straightway the clergyman went off, with this seed 
of suspicion sprouting in him, and wrote to a min- 
ister residing in that town where Williams had been 
jailed and converted; asked for light; and also asked 
if a person in the literary line (meaning me) might be 
allowed to print the letter and tell its history. He 
presently received this answer: 

Rev. . 

My Dear Friend: In regard to that "convict's letter" there 
can be no doubt as to its genuineness. "Williams," to whom it 
was written, lay in our jail and professed to have been converted, 
and Rev. Mr. , the chaplain, had great faith in the genuine- 
ness of the change — as much as one can have in any such case. 

The letter was sent to one of our ladies, who is a Sunday- 
school teacher — sent either by Williams himself, or the chaplain 

422 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

of the state's prison, probably. She has been greatly annoyed 
in having so much publicity, lest it might seem a breach of 
coniidence, or be an injury to Williams. In regard to its pub- 
lication, I can give no permission; though, if the names and 
places were omitted, and especially if sent out of the country, 
I think you might take the responsibility and do it. 

It is a wonderful letter, which no Christian genius, much less 
one unsanc tilled, could ever have written. As showing the 
work of grace in a human heart, and in a very degraded and 
wicked one, it proves its own origin and reproves our weak 
faith in its power to cope with any form of wickedness. 

"Mr. Brown" of St. Louis, some one said, was a Hartford man. 
Do all whom you send from Hartford serve their Master as well? 

P. S. — Williams is still in the state's prison, serving out a long 
sentence — of nine years, I thinlc. He has been sick and threat- 
ened with consumption, but I have not inquired after him 
lately. This lady that I speak of corresponds with him, I pre- 
sume, and will be quite sure to look after him. 

This letter arrived a few days after it was written 
— and up went Mr. Williams's stock again. Mr. 
Warner's low-down suspicion was laid in the cold, 
cold grave, where it apparently belonged. It was a 
suspicion based upon mere internal evidence, any- 
way; and when you come to internal evidence, it's 
a big field and a game that two can play at: as 
witness this other internal evidence, discovered by 
the writer of the note above quoted, that "it is a 
wonderful letter — which no Christian genius, much 
less one unsanctified, could ever have written." 

I had permission now to print — provided I sup- 
pressed names and places and sent my narrative out 
of the country. So I chose an Australian magazine 
for vehicle, as being far enough out of the country, 
and set myself to work on my article. And the 

423 



MARK TWAIN 

ministers set the pumps going again, with the letter 
to work the handles. 

But meantime Brother Page had been agitating. 
He had not visited the penitentiary, but he had sent 
a copy of the illustrious letter to the chaplain of that 
institution, and accompanied it with — apparently — 
inquiries. He got an answer, dated four days later 
than that other brother's reassuring epistle; and 
before my article was complete, it wandered into 
my hands. The original is before me now, and I 
here append it. It is pretty well loaded with in- 
ternal evidence of the most solid description: 

State's Prison, Chaplain's OrriCE, July ii, 1873. 
Dear Bro. Page: 

Herewith please find the letter kindly loaned me. I am afraid 
its genuineness cannot be established. It purports to be ad- 
dressed to some prisoner here. No such letter ever came to a 
prisoner here. All letters received are carefully read by officers 
of the prison before they go into the hands of the convicts, and 
any such letter could not be forgotten. Again, Charles Williams 
is not a Christian man, but a dissolute, cunning prodigal, whose 
father is a minister of the gospel. His name is an assumed one. 
I am glad to have made your acquaintance. I am preparing a 
lecture upon life seen through prison bars, and should like to 
deliver the same in your vicinity. 

And so ended that little drama. My poor article 
went into the fire; for whereas the materials for it 
were now more abundant and infinitely richer than 
they had previously been, there were parties all 
aroimd me who, although longing for the publication 
before, were a unit for suppression at this stage and 
complexion of the game. They said, "Wait — the 
wound is too fresh, yet." All the copies of the 

434 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

famous letter, except mine, disappeared suddenly; 
and from that time onward, the aforetime same old 
drought set in, in the churches. As a rule, the town 
was on a spacious grin for a while, but there were 
places in it where the grin did not appear, and 
where it was dangerous to refer to the ex-convict's 
letter. 

A word of explanation: **Jack Hunt," the pro- 
fessed writer of the letter, was an imaginary person. 
The burglar Williams — Harvard graduate, son of a 
minister — wrote the letter himself, to himself: got it 
smuggled out of the prison; got it conveyed to per- 
sons who had supported and encouraged him in his 
conversion — where he knew two things would hap- 
pen: the genuineness of the letter would not be 
doubted or inquired into; and the nub of it would 
be noticed, and would have valuable effect — the 
effect, indeed, of starting a movement to get Mr. 
Williams pardoned out of prison. 
" That *'nub" is so ingeniously, so casually, flung 
in, and immediately left there in the tail of the 
letter, undwelt upon, that an indifferent reader 
would never suspect that it was the heart and core 
of the epistle, if he even took note of it at all. This 
is the "nub'*: 

i hope the warm weather is doing your lungs good — i was 
afraid when you was bleeding you would die — give my respects, etc. 

That is all there is of it — simply touch and go — 
no dwelling upon it. Nevertheless it was intended 
for an eye that would be swift to see it; and it was 
meant to move a kind heart to try to effect the 

425 



MARK TWAIN 

liberation of a poor reformed and purified fellow 
lying in the fell grip of consumption. 

When I for the first time heard that letter read, 
nine years ago, I felt that it was the most remarkable 
one I had ever encountered. And it so warmed me 
toward Mr. Brown of St. Louis that I said that if 
ever I visited that city again, I would seek out that 
excellent man and kiss the hem of his garment, if 
it was a new one. Well, I visited St. Louis, but I 
did not hunt for Mr. Brown ; for alas ! the investiga- 
tions of long ago had proved that the benevolent 
Brown, like **Jack Hunt," was not a real person, 
but a sheer invention of that gifted rascal, Williams 
— ^burglar, Harvard graduate, son of a clergyman. 



CHAPTER LIII 

MY BOYHOOD HOME 

WE took passage in one of the fast boats of the 
St. Louis and St. Paul Packet Company, and 
started up the river. 

When I, as a boy, first saw the mouth of the 
Missouri River, it was twenty-two or twenty-three 
miles above St. Louis, according to the estimate of 
pilots; the wear and tear of the banks has moved 
it down eight miles since then; and the pilots say 
that within five years the river will cut through and 
move the mouth down five miles more, which will 
bring it within ten miles of St. Louis. 

About nightfall we passed the large and flourishing 
town of Alton, Illinois, and before daylight next 
morning the town of Louisiana, Missouri, a sleepy 
village in my day, but a brisk railway-center now; 
however, all the towns out there are railway-centers 
now. I could not clearly recognize the place. This 
seemed odd to me, for when I retired from the rebel 
army in '6i I retired upon Louisiana in good order; 
at least in good enough order for a person who had 
not yet learned how to retreat according to the rules 
of war, and had to trust to native genius. It seemed 
to me that for a first attempt at a retreat it was 

427 



MARK TWAIN 

not badly done. I had done no advancing in all 
that campaign that was at all equal to it. 

There was a railway bridge across the river here 
well sprinkled with glowing lights, and a very beauti- 
ful sight it was. 

At seven in the morning we reached Hannibal, 
Missouri, where my boyhood was spent. I had had 
a glimpse of it fifteen years ago, and another glimpse 
six years earlier, but both were so brief that they 
hardly counted. The only notion of the town that 
remained in my mind was the memory of it as I 
had known it when I first quitted it twenty-nine 
years ago. That picture of it was still as clear and 
vivid to me as a photograph. I stepped ashore with 
the feeling of one who returns out of a dead-and-gone 
generation. I had a sort of realizing sense of what 
the Bastille prisoners must have felt when they used 
to come out and look upon Paris after years of 
captivity, and note how curiously the familiar and 
the strange were mixed together before them. I 
saw the new houses — saw them plainly enough — but 
they did not affect the older picture in my mind, 
for through their solid bricks and mortar I saw the 
vanished houses, which had formerly stood there, 
with perfect distinctness. 

It was Sunday morning, and everybody was abed 
yet. So I passed through the vacant streets, still 
seeing the town as it was, and not as it is, and 
recognizing and metaphorically shaking hands with 
a hundred familiar objects which no longer exist; and 
finally climbed Holiday's Hill to get a comprehensive 
view. The whole town lay spread out below me 

428 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

then, and I could mark and fix ever}^ locality, every 
detail. Naturally, I was a good deal moved. I 
said, ''Many of the people I once knew in this 
tranquil refuge of my childhood are now in heaven; 
some, I trust, are in the other place." 

The things about me and before me made me feel 
like a boy again — convinced me that I was a boy 
again, and that I had simply been dreaming an un- 
usually long dream; but my reflections spoiled all 
that; for they forced me to say, "I see fifty old 
houses down yonder, into each of which I could enter 
and find either a man or a woman who was a baby or 
unborn when I noticed those houses last, or a grand- 
mother who was a plump young bride at that time." 

From this vantage-groimd the extensive view up 
and down the river, and wide over the wooded ex- 
panses of Illinois, is very beautiful — one of the most 
beautiful on the Mississippi, I think; which is a 
hazardous remark to make, for the eight hundred 
miles of river between St. Louis and St. Paul afford 
an unbroken succession of lovely pictures. It may 
be that my affection for the one in question biases 
my judgment in its favor; I cannot say as to that. 
No matter, it was satisfyingly beautiful to me, and 
it had this advantage over all the other friends 
whom I was about to greet again : it had suffered no 
change; it was as young and fresh and comely and 
gracious as ever it had been; whereas, the faces of 
the others would be old, and scarred with the cam- 
paigns of life, and marked with their griefs and 
defeats, and would give me no upliftings of spirit. 

An old gentleman, out on an early morning walk, 
429 



MARK TWAIN 

came along, and we discussed the weather, and then 
drifted into other matters. I could not remember 
his face. He said he had been living here twenty- 
eight years. So he had come after my time, and I 
had never seen him before. I asked him various 
questions; first about a mate of mine in Sunday- 
school — what became of him? 

"He graduated with honor in an Eastern college, 
wandered off into the world somewhere, succeeded 
at nothing, passed out of knowledge and memory 
years ago, and is supposed to have gone to the dogs." 

*'He was bright, and promised well when he was 
a boy.'* 

"Yes, but the thing that happened is what became 
of it all." 

I asked after another lad, altogether the brightest 
in our village school when I was a boy. 

"He, too, was graduated with honors, from an 
Eastern college ; but life whipped him in every battle, 
straight along, and he died in one of the territories, 
years ago, a defeated man." 

I asked after another of the bright boys. 

* * He is a success, always has been, always will be, 
I think." 

I inquired after a young fellow who came to the 
town to study for one of the professions when I 
was a boy. 

"He went at something else before he got through 
— ^went from medicine to law, or from law to medi- 
cine — then to some other new thing; went away for 
a year, came back with a young wife; fell to drink- 
ing, then to gambling behind the door; finally took 

430 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

his wife and two children to her father's, and went 
off to Mexico; went from bad to worse, and finally- 
died there, without a cent to buy a shroud, and 
without a friend to attend the funeral." 

"Pity, for he was the best-natured and most 
cheery and hopeful young fellow that ever was." 

I named another boy. 

"Oh, he is all right. Lives here yet; has a wife 
and children, and is prospering." 

Same verdict concerning other boys. 

I named three school-girls. 

"The first two live here, are married and have chil- 
dren; the other is long ago dead — never married." 

I named, with emotion, one of my early sweethearts. 

"She is all right. Been married three times; 
buried two husbands, divorced from the third, and 
I hear she is getting ready to marry an old fellow 
out in Colorado somewhere. She's got children scat- 
tered around here and there, most every wheres." 

The answer to several other inquiries was brief 
and simple : 

"Killed in the war." 

I named another boy. 

"Well now, his case is curious! There wasn't a 
human being in this town but knew that that boy 
was a perfect chucklehead; perfect dummy; just a 
stupid ass, as you may say. Everybody knew it, and 
everybody said it. Well, if that very boy isn't the 
first law^^er in the state of Missouri to-day, I'm a 
Democrat!" 

"Is that so?'* 

"It's actually so. I'm telling you the truth." 
431 



MARK TWAIN 

"How do you account for it?" 

"Account for it? There ain't any accounting for 

it, except that if you send a d d fool to St. 

Louis, and you don't tell them he's a d d fool, 

they'll never find it out. There's one thing sure — if 

I had a d d fool I should know what to do with 

him: ship him to St. Louis — ^it's the noblest market 
in the world for that kind of property. Well, when 
you come to look at it all around, and chew at it 
and think it over, don't it just bang an3rthing you 
ever heard of?" 

"Well, yes; it does seem to. But don't you think 
maybe it was the Hannibal people who were mistaken 
about the boy, and not the St. Louis people?" 

* * Oh, nonsense ! The people here have known him 
from the very cradle — they knew him a hundred 
times better than the St. Louis idiots could have 

known him. No; if you have got any d d fools 

that you want to realize on, take my advice — send 
them to St. Louis." 

I mentioned a great number of people whom I had 
formerly known. Some were dead, some were gone 
away, some had prospered, some had come to naught ; 
but as regarded a dozen or so of the lot, the answer 
was comforting: 

"Prosperous — live here yet — ^town littered with 
their children." 

I asked about Miss . 

"Died in the insane asylum three or foiu* years 
ago — ^never was out of it from the time she went in; 
and was always suffering too; never got a shred of 
her mind back." 

432 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

If he spoke the truth, here was a heavy tragedy, 
indeed. Thirty-six years in a madhouse, that some 
young fools might have some fun! I was a small 
boy at the time; and I saw those giddy young ladies 

come tiptoeing into the room where Miss sat 

reading at midnight by a lamp. The girl at the head 
of the file wore a shroud and a doughface; she crept 
behind the victim, touched her on the shoulder, and 
she looked up and screamed, and then fell into con- 
\ailsions. She did not recover from the fright, but 
went mad. In these days it seems incredible that 
people believed in ghosts so short a time ago. But 
they did. 

After asking after such other folk as I could call 
to mind, I finally inquired about myself. 

"Oh, he succeeded well enough — another case of 

d d fool. If they'd sent him to St. Louis, he'd 

have succeeded sooner." 

It was with much satisfaction that I recognized 
the wisdom of having told this candid gentleman, in 
the beginning, that my name was Smith. 



CHAPTER LIV 

PAST AND PRESENT 

BEING left to myself, up there, I went on picking 
out old houses in the distant town, and calling 
back their former inmates out of the moldy past. 
Among them I presently recognized the house of the 
father of Lem Hackett (fictitious name). It carried 
me back more than a generation in a moment, and 
landed me in the midst of a time when the happenings 
of life were not the natural and logical results of 
great general laws, but of special orders, and were 
freighted with very precise and distinct purposes — 
partly punitive in intent, partly admonitory; and 
usually local in application. 

When I was a smaU boy, Lem Hackett was 
drowned — on a Sunday. He feU out of an empty 
flatboat, where he was playing. Being loaded with 
sin, he went to the bottom like an anvil. He was 
the only boy in the village who slept that night. 
We others all lay awake, repenting. We had not 
needed the information, delivered from the pulpit 
that evening, that Lem's was a case of special 
judgment — we knew that, already. There was a 
ferocious thunder-storm that night, and it raged 
continuously until near dawn. The wind blew, the 
windows rattled, the rain swept along the roof in 

434 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

pelting sheets, and at the briefest of intervals the 
inky blackness of the night vanished, the houses 
over the way glared out white and blinding for a 
quivering instant, then the soHd darkness shut down 
again and a splitting peal of thunder followed which 
seemed to rend everything in the neighborhood to 
shreds and splinters. I sat up in bed quaking and 
shuddering, waiting for the destruction of the world, 
and expecting it. To me there was nothing strange 
or incongruous in Heaven's making such an uproar 
about Lem Hackett. Apparently it was the right 
and proper thing to do. Not a doubt entered my 
mind that all the angels were grouped together, 
discussing this boy's case and observing the awful 
bombardment of oiu* beggarly little village with 
satisfaction and approval. There was one thing 
which disturbed me in. the most serious way: that 
was the thought that this centering of the celestial 
interest on our village could not fail to attract the 
attention of the observers to people among us who 
might otherwise have escaped notice for years. I 
felt that I was not only one of those people, but the 
very one most likely to be discovered. That dis- 
covery could have but one result : I should be in the 
fire with Lem before the chill of the river had been 
fairly warmed out of him. I knew that this would 
be only just and fair. I was increasing the chances 
against myself all the time, by feeling a secret bitter- 
ness against Lem for having attracted this fatal 
attention to me, but I could not help it — this sinful 
thought persisted in infesting my breast in spite of 
me. Every time the lightning glared T caught my 

435 



MARK TWAIN 

breath, and judged I was gone. In my terror and 
misery I meanly began to suggest other boys, and 
mention acts of theirs which were wickeder than 
mine, and peculiarly needed punishment — and I tried 
to pretend to myself that I was simply doing this 
in a casual way, and without intent to divert the 
heavenly attention to them for the purpose of 
getting rid of it myself. With deep sagacity I put 
these mentions into the form of sorrowing recollec- 
tions and left-handed sham-supplications that the 
sins of those boys might be allowed to pass unnoticed 
— "Possibly they may repent." "It is true that 
Jim Smith broke a window and lied about it — ^but 
maybe he did not mean any harm. And although 
Tom Holmes says more bad words than any other 
boy in the village, he probably intends to repent — 
though he has never said he would. And while it 
is a fact that John Jones did fish a little on Simday, 
once, he didn't really catch anything but only just 
one small useless mudcat ; and maybe that wouldn't 
have been so awful if he had thrown it back — as he 
says he did, but he didn't. Pity but they would 
repent of these dreadful things — ^and maybe they 
will yet." 

But while I was shamefully trying to draw atten- 
tion to these poor chaps — who were doubtless di- 
recting the celestial attention to me at the same 
moment, though I never once suspected that — I had 
heedlessly left my candle burning. It was not a time 
to neglect even trifling precautions. There was no 
occasion to add anything to the facilities for attract- 
ing notice to me — so I put the light out. 

4^6 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

It was a long night to me, and perhaps the most 
distressful one I ever spent. I endured agonies of 
remorse for sins which I knew I had committed, and 
for others which I was not certain about, yet was 
sure that they had been set down against me in a 
book by an angel who was wiser than I and did not 
trust such important matters to memory. It struck 
me, by and by, that I had been making a most 
foolish and calamitous mistake, in one respect; 
doubtless I had not only made my own destruction 
sure by directing attention to those other boys, but 
had already accomplished theirs! Doubtless the 
lightning had stretched them all dead in their beds 
by this time ! The anguish and the fright which this 
thought gave me made my previous sufferings seem 
trifling by comparison. 

Things had become truly serious. I resolved to 
turn over a new leaf instantly; I also resolved to 
connect myself with the church next day, if I sur- 
vived to see its sun appear. I resolved to cease 
from sin in all its forms, and to lead a high and 
blameless life forever after. I would be punctual at 
church and Sunday-school; visit the sick; carry 
baskets of victuals to the poor (simply to fulfil the 
regulation conditions, although I knew we had none 
among us so poor but they would smash the basket 
over my head for my pains) ; I would instruct other 
boys in right ways, and take the resulting trouncings 
meekly; I would subsist entirely on tracts; I would 
invade the rum shop and warn the drunkard — and 
finally, if I escaped the fate of those who early be- 
come kx) good to live, I would go for a missionary. 

437 



MARK TWAIN 

The storm subsided toward daybreak, and I 
dozed gradually to sleep with a sense of obligation 
to Lena Hackett for going to eternal suffering in that 
abrupt way, and thus preventing a far more dreadful 
disaster — my own loss. 

But when I rose refreshed, by and by, and found 
that those other boys were still alive, I had a dim 
sense that perhaps the whole thing was a false alarm; 
that the entire timnoil had been on Lem's account 
and nobody's else. The world looked so bright and 
safe that there did not seem to be any real occasion 
to turn over a new leaf. I was a little subdued 
during that day, and perhaps the next; after that, 
my purpose of reforming slowly dropped out of my 
mind, and I had a peaceful, comfortable time again, 
until the next storm. 

That storm came about three weeks later; and it 
was the most unaccountable one, to me, that I had 
ever experienced; for on the afternoon of that day, 
"Dutchy" was drowned. Dutchy belonged to our 
Sunday-school. He was a German lad who did not 
know enough to come in out of the rain; but he was 
exasperatingly good, and had a prodigious memory. 
One Simday he made himself the envy of all the 
youth and the talk of the admiring village, by 
reciting three thousand verses of Scripture without 
missing a word : then he went off the very next day 
and got drowned. 

Circumstances gave to his death a peculiar im- 
pressiveness. We were all bathing in a muddy 
creek which had a deep hole in it, and in this hole the 
coopers had sunk a pile of green hickory hoop-poles 

438 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

to soak, some twelve feet under water. We were 
diving and ''seeing who could stay under longest." 
We managed to remain down by holding on to the 
hoop-poles. Dutchy made such a poor success of 
it that he was hailed with laughter and derision 
every time his head appeared above water. At last 
he seemed hurt with the taunts, and begged us to 
stand still on the bank and be fair with him and 
give him an honest count— ''be friendly and kind 
just this once, and not miscoimt for the sake of 
having the fun of laughing at him.'* Treacherous 
winks were exchanged, and all said, "All right, 
Dutchy — go ahead, we'll play fair." 

Dutchy plunged in, but the boys, instead of 
beginning to count, followed the lead of one of their 
number and scampered to a range of blackberry 
bushes close by and hid behind it. They imagined 
Dutchy 's humiliation, when he should rise after a 
superhuman effort and find the place silent and 
vacant, nobody there to applaud. They were "so 
fuU of laugh'* with the idea that they were continu- 
ally exploding into muffled cackles. Time swept on, 
and presently one who was peeping through the 
briers said, with surprise : 

"Why, he hasn't come up yet!" 

The laughing stopped. 

"Boys, it's a splendid dive," said one. 

"Never mind that," said another, "the joke on 
him is all the better for it." 

There was a remark or two more, and then a 
pause. Talking ceased, and all began to peer 
through the vines. Before long, the boys' faces 

439 



MARK TWAIN 

began to look uneasy, then anxious, then terrified. 
Still there was no movement of the placid water. 
Hearts began to beat fast, and faces to turn pale. 
We all glided out silently, and stood on the bank, 
our horrified eyes wandering back and forth from 
each other's countenances to the water. 

''Somebody must go down and see!'* 

Yes, that was plain; but nobody wanted that 
grisly task. 

"Draw straws!" 

So we did — with hands which shook so that we 
hardly knew what we were about. The lot fell to 
me, and I went down. The water was so muddy I 
could not see anything, but I felt around among the 
hoop-poles, and presently grasped a limp wrist which 
gave me no response — and if it had I should not have 
known it, I let it go wdth such a frightened suddenness. 

The boy had been caught among the hoop-poles 
and entangled there, helplessly. I fled to the sur- 
face and told the awful news. Some of us knew that 
if the boy were dragged out at once he might possibly 
be resuscitated, but we never thought of that. We 
did not think of anything; we did not know what to 
do, so we did nothing — except that the smaller lads 
cried piteously, and we all struggled frantically into 
our clothes, putting on anybody's that came handy, 
and getting them wrong side out and upside down, 
as a rule. Then we scurried away and gave the 
alarm, but none of us went back to see the end of 
the tragedy. We had a more important thing to 
attend to : we all flew home, and lost not a moment 
in getting ready to lead a better life. 

440 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

The night presently closed down. Then came on 
that tremendous and utterly unaccountable storm. 
I was perfectly dazed; I could not understand it. It 
seemed to me that there must be some mistake. The 
elements were turned loose, and they rattled and 
banged and blazed away in the most blind and frantic 
manner. All heart and hope went out of me, and 
the dismal thought kept floating through my brain, 
" If a boy who knows three thousand verses by heart 
is not satisfactory, what chance is there for anybody 
else?" 

Of course I never questioned for a moment that 
the storm was on Dutchy's account, or that he or 
any other inconsequential animal was worthy of such 
a majestic demonstration from on high; the lesson 
of it was the only thing that troubled me ; for it con- 
vinced me that if Dutchy, with all his perfections, 
was not a delight, it would be vain for me to turn 
over a new leaf, for I must infallibly fall hopelessly 
short of that boy, no matter how hard I might try. 
Nevertheless I did turn it over — a highly educated 
fear compelled me to do that — ^but succeeding days 
of cheerfulness and sunshine came bothering around, 
and within a month I had so drifted backward that 
again I was as lost and comfortable as ever. 

Breakfast-time approached while I mused these 
musings and called these ancient happenings back 
to mind; so I got me back into the present and 
went down the hill. 

On my way through town to the hotel, I saw the 
house which was my home when I was a boy. At 
present rates, the people who now occupy it are of 

441 



MARK TWAIN 

no more value than I am ; but in my time they would 
have been worth not less than five hundred dollars 
apiece. They are colored folk. 

After breakfast I went out alone again, intending 
to himt up some of the Sunday-schools and see how 
this generation of pupils might compare with their 
progenitors who had sat with me in those places and 
had probably taken me as a model — though I do not 
remember as to that now. By the public square 
there had been in my day a shabby little brick 
church called the ''Old Ship of Zion," which I had 
attended as a Sunday-school scholar; and I foimd the 
locality easily enough, but not the old chiurch; it was 
gone, and a trig and rather hilarious new edifice was 
in its place. The pupils were better dressed and 
better looking than were those of my time; conse- 
quently they did not resemble their ancestors; and 
consequently there was nothing familiar to me in 
their faces. Still, I contemplated them with a deep 
interest and a yearning wistfulness, and if I had been 
a girl I would have cried ; for they were the offspring, 
and represented, and occupied the places, of boys 
and girls some of whom I had loved to love, and 
some of whom I had loved to hate, but all of whom 
were dear to me for the one reason or the other, so 
many years gone by — and. Lord, where be they 
now! 

I was mightily stirred, and would have been 
grateful to be allowed to remain unmolested and 
look my fill; but a bald-summited superintendent 
who had been a towheaded Sunday-school mate of 
mine of that spot in the early ages, recognized me, 

442 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

and I talked a flutter of wild nonsense to those chil- 
dren to hide the thoughts which were in me, and 
which could not have been spoken without a betrayal 
of feeling that would have been recognized as out of 
character with me. 

Making speeches without preparation is no gift of 
mine; and I was resolved to shirk any new oppor- 
tunity, but in the next and larger Sunday-school I 
foimd myself in the rear of the assemblage; so I was 
very willing to go on the platform a moment for 
the sake of getting a good look at the scholars. On 
the spur of the moment I could not recall any of 
the old idiotic talks which visitors used to insult me 
with when I was a pupil there; and I was sorry for 
this, since it would have given me time and excuse 
to dawdle there and take a long and satisfying look 
at what I feel at liberty to say was an array of fresh 
young comeliness not matchable in another Simday- 
school of the same size. As I talked merely to get 
a chance to inspect, and as I strung out the random 
rubbish solely to prolong the inspectio^i, I judged it 
but decent to confess these low motives, and I 
did so. 

If the Model Boy was in either of these Sunday- 
schools, I did not see him. The Model Boy of my 
time — we never had but the one — was perfect: per- 
fect in manners, perfect in dress, perfect in conduct, 
perfect in filial piety, perfect in exterior godliness; 
but at bottom he was a prig; and as for the contents 
of his skull, they could have changed place with the 
contents of a pie, and nobody would have been the 
worse off for it but the pie. This fellow's reproach- 

443 



MARK TWAIN 

lessness was a standing reproach to every lad in the 
village. He was the admiration of all the mothers, 
and the detestation of all their sons. I was told 
what became of him, but as it was a disappointment 
to me, I will not enter into details. He succeeded 
in life. 



CHAPTER LV 

A VENDETTA AND OTHER THINGS 

DURING my three days' stay in the town, I woke 
up every morning with the impression that I 
was a boy — for in my dreams the faces were all young 
again, and looked as they had looked in the old 
times; but I went to bed a hundred years old, every 
night — for meantime I had been seeing those faces 
as they are now. 

Of course I suffered some surprises, along at first, 
before I had become adjusted to the changed state 
of things. I met young ladies who did not seem to 
have changed at all; but they turned out to be the 
daughters of the young ladies I had in mind — some- 
times their granddaughters. When you are told that 
a stranger of fifty is a grandmother, there is nothing 
surprising about it ; but if, on the contrary, she is a 
person whom you knew as a little girl, it seems im- 
possible. You say to yourself, ''How can a little girl 
be a grandmother?" It takes some little time to 
accept and realize the fact that while you have been 
growing old, your friends have not been standing 
still, in that matter. 

I noticed that the greatest changes observable 
were with the women, not the men. I saw men 
whom thirty years had changed but slightly; but 

445 



MARK TWAIN 

their wives had grown old. These were good women ; 
it is very wearing to be good. 

There was a saddler whom I wished to see; but 
he was gone. Dead, these many years, they said. 
Once or twice a day, the saddler used to go tearing 
down the street, putting on his coat as he went; 
and then everybody knew a steamboat was coming. 
Everybody knew, also, that John Stavely was not 
expecting anybody by the boat — or any freight, 
either; and Stavely must have known that every- 
body knew this, still it made no difference to him; 
he liked to seem to himself to be expecting a hundred 
thousand tons of saddles by this boat, and so he 
went on all his life, enjoying being faithfully on hand 
to receive and receipt for those saddles, in case by 
any miracle they should come. A malicious Quincy 
paper used always to refer to this town, in derision, 
as " Stavely 's Landing." Stavely was one of my 
earliest admirations; I envied him his rush of im- 
aginary business, and the display he was able to 
make of it before strangers, as he went flying down 
the street, struggling with his fluttering coat. 

But there was a carpenter who was my chiefest 
hero. He was a mighty liar, but I did not know 
that; I believed everything he said. He was a ro- 
mantic, sentimental, melodramatic fraud, and his 
bearing impressed me with awe. I vividly remem- 
ber the first time he took me into his confidence. 
He was planing a board, and every now and then 
he would pause and heave a deep sigh and occasion- 
ally mutter broken sentences — confused and not 
intelligible — ^but out of their midst an ejaculation 

446 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

sometimes escaped which made me shiver and did 
me good: one was, "O God, it is his blood!" I sat 
on the tool-chest and humbly and shudderingly ad- 
mired him; for I judged he was full of crime. At 
last he said in a low voice : 

"My Httle friend, can you keep a secret?" 

I eagerly said I could. 

**A dark and dreadful one?" 

I satisfied him on that point. 

"Then I will tell you some passages in my his- 
tory; for oh, I must relieve my burdened soul, or I 
shall die!" 

He cautioned me once more to be "as silent as 
the grave"; then he told me he was a "red-handed 
murderer." He put down his plane, held his hands 
out before him, contemplated them sadly, and said: 

"Look — with these hands I have taken the lives 
of thirty human beings!" 

The effect which this had upon me was an inspira- 
tion to him, and he turned himself loose upon his 
subject with interest and energy. He left general- 
izing, and went into details — began with his first 
murder; described it, told what measures he had 
taken to avert suspicion; then passed to his second 
homicide, his third, his fourth, and so on. He had 
always done his miu-ders with a bowie-knife, and he 
made all my hairs rise by suddenly snatching it out 
and showing it to me. 

At the end of this first seance I went home with 
six of his fearful secrets among my freightage, and 
found them a great help to my dreams, which had 
been sluggish for a while back. I sought him again 

447 



MARK TWAIN 

and again, on my Saturday holidays ; in fact, I spent 
the summer with him — all of it which was valuable 
to me. His fascinations never diminished, for he 
threw something fresh and stirring, in the way of 
horror, into each successive murder. He always gave 
names, dates, places — everything. This by and by 
enabled me to note two things: that he had killed 
his victims in every quarter of the globe, and that 
these victims were always named Lynch. The de- 
struction of the Lynches went serenely on, Saturday 
after Saturday, until the original thirty had mtdti- 
plied to sixty — and more to be heard from yet ; then 
my curiosity got the better of my timidity, and I 
asked how it happened that these justly pimished 
persons all bore the same name. 

My hero said he had never divulged that dark 
secret to any living being; but felt that he could 
trust me, and therefore he would lay bare before me 
the story of his sad and blighted life. He had loved 
one **too fair for earth," and she had reciprocated 
"with all the sweet affection of her pure and noble 
nature." But he had a rival, a "base hireling " named 
Archibald Lynch, who said the girl should be his, or 
he would "dye his hands in her heart's best blood." 
The carpenter, "innocent and happy in love's young 
dream," gave no weight to the threat, but led his 
"golden-haired darling to the altar," and there the 
two were made one ; there, also, just as the minister's 
hands were stretched in blessing over their heads, 
the fell deed was done — with a knife — and the bride 
fell a corpse at her husband's feet. And what did 
the husband do? He plucked forth that knife, and, 

448 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

kneeling by the body of his lost one, swore to "con- 
secrate his life to the extermination of all the human 
scum that bear the hated name of Lynch." 

That was it. He had been hunting down the 
Lynches and slaughtering them, from that day to 
this — twenty years. He had always used that same 
consecrated knife; with it he had murdered his long 
array of Lynches, and with it he had left upon the 
forehead of each victim a peculiar mark — a cross, 
deeply incised. Said he : 

**The cross of the Mysterious Avenger is known 
in Europe, in America, in China, in Siam, in the 
Tropics, in the Polar Seas, in the deserts of Asia, 
in all the earth. Wherever in the uttermost parts 
of the globe a Lynch has penetrated, there has the 
Mysterious Cross been seen, and those who have 
seen it have shuddered and said, ' It is his mark ; he 
has been here!' You have heard of the Mysterious 
Avenger — look upon him, for before you stands no 
less a person! But beware — ^breathe not a word to 
any soul. Be silent, and wait. Some morning this 
town will flock aghast to view a gory corpse; on its 
brow will be seen the awful sign, and men will trem- 
ble and whisper, ' He has been here — it is the Myste- 
rious Avenger's mark!' You will come here, but I 
shall have vanished; you will see me no more." 

This ass had been reading the "Jibbenainosay," 
no doubt, and had had his poor romantic head 
turned by it; but as I had not yet seen the book 
then, I took his inventions for truth, and did not 
suspect that he was a plagiarist. 

However, we had a Lynch living in the town; and 
449 



mark: twain 

the more I reflected upon his impending doom, the 
more I could not sleep. It seemed my plain duty 
to save him, and a still plainer and more important 
duty to get some sleep for myself, so at last I ven- 
tured to go to Mr. Lynch and tell him what was 
about to happen to him — ^tmder strict secrecy. I 
advised him to ''fly," and certainly expected him 
to do it. But he laughed at me; and he did not stop 
there; he led me down to the carpenter's shop, gave 
the carpenter a jeering and scornful lecture upon his 
silly pretensions, slapped his face, made him get 
down on his knees and beg — then went off and left 
me to contemplate the cheap and pitiful ruin of what, 
in my eyes, had so lately been a majestic and in- 
comparable hero. The carpenter blustered, flour- 
ished his knife, and doomed this Lynch in his usual 
volcanic style, the size of his fateful words undimin- 
ished; but it was all wasted upon me; he was a 
hero to me no longer, but only a poor, foolish, ex- 
posed humbug. I was ashamed of him, and ashamed 
of myself; I took no further interest in him, and 
never went to his shop any more. He was a heavy 
loss to me, for he was the greatest hero I had ever 
known. The fellow must have had some talent; 
for some of his imaginary murders were so vividly 
and dramatically described that I remember all their 
details yet. 

The people of Hannibal are not more changed than 
is the town. It is no longer a village; it is a city, 
with a Mayor, and a council, and water-works, and 
probably a debt. It has fifteen thousand people, is 
a thriving and energetic place, and is paved like the 

450 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

rest of the West and South — where a well -paved 
street and a good sidewalk are things so seldom seen 
that one doubts them when he does see them. The 
customary half-dozen railways center in Hannibal 
now, and there is a new depot, which cost a hundred 
thousand dollars. In my time the town had no 
specialty, and no commercial grandeur; the daily 
packet usually landed a passenger and bought a 
catfish, and took away another passenger and a hatful 
of freight; but now a huge commerce in lumber has 
grown up, and a large miscellaneous commerce is one 
of the results. A deal of money changes hands 
there now. 

Bear Creek — so called, perhaps, because it was 
always so particularly bare of bears — is hidden out of 
sight now, under islands and continents of piled 
limiber, and nobody but an expert can find it. I 
used to get drowned in it every summer regularly, 
and be drained out, and inflated and set going again 
by some chance enemy; but not enough of it is un- 
occupied now to drown a person in. It was a famous 
breeder of chills and fever in its day. I remember 
one summer when everybody in town had this dis- 
ease at once. Many chimneys were shaken down, 
and all the houses were so racked that the town had 
to be rebuilt. The chasm or gorge between Lover's 
Leap and the hill west of it is supposed by scientists 
to have been caused by glacial action. This is a 
mistake. 

There is an interesting cave a mile or two below 
Hannibal, among the bluffs. I would have liked to 
revisit it, but had not time. In my time the person 

451 



MARK TWAIN 

who then owned it turned it into a mausoleum for his 
daughter, aged fourteen. The body of this poor 
child was put into a copper cylinder filled with alco- 
hol, and this was suspended in one of the dismal 
avenues of the cave. The top of the cy Under was 
removable; and it was said to be a common thing 
for the baser order of tourists to drag the dead face 
into view and examine it and comment upon it. 



CHAPTER LVI 

A QUESTION OF LAW 

THE slaughter-house is gone from the mouth of 
Bear Creek and so is the small jail (or "cala- 
boose") which once stood in its neighborhood. A 
citizen asked, "Do you remember when Jimmy 
Finn, the town drunkard, was burned to death in the 
calaboose?" 

Observe, now, how history becomes defiled, 
through lapse of time and the help of the bad mem- 
ories of men. Jimmy Finn was not burned in the 
calaboose, but died a natiu-al death in a tan vat, of 
a combination of delirium tremens and spontaneous 
combustion. When I say natural death, I mean it 
was a natural death for Jimmy Finn to die. The 
calaboose victim was not a citizen; he was a poor 
stranger, a harmless, whisky-sodden tramp. I know 
more about his case than anybody else; I knew too 
much of it, in that bygone day, to relish speaking 
of it. That tramp was wandering about the streets 
one chilly evening, with a pipe in his mouth, and 
begging for a match; he got neither matches nor 
courtesy; on the contrary, a troop of bad little boys 
followed him around and amused themselves with 
nagging and annoying him. I assisted; but at last, 

453 



MARK TWAIN 

some appeal which the wayfarer made for forbear- 
ance, accompanying it with a pathetic reference to 
his forlorn and friendless condition, touched such 
sense of shame and remnant of right feeling as were 
left in me, and I went away and got him some 
matches, and then hied me home and to bed, heavily 
weighted as to conscience, and unbuoyant in spirit. 
An hour or two afterward the man was arrested and 
locked up in the calaboose by the marshal — ^large 
name for a constable, but that was his title. At 
two in the morning, the church-bells rang for fire, 
and everybody turned out, of cotirse — I with the rest. 
The tramp had used his matches disastrously; he 
had set his straw bed on fire, and the oaken sheathing 
of the room had caught. When I reached the 
ground, two hundred men, women, and children 
stood massed together, transfixed with horror, and 
staring at the grated windows of the jail. Behind 
the iron bars, and tugging frantically at them, and 
screaming for help, stood the tramp; he seemed like 
a black object set against a sun, so white and intense 
was the light at his back. That marshal could not 
be fotmd, and he had the only key. A battering- 
ram was quickly improvised, and the thunder of its 
blows upon the door had so encouraging a sound that 
the spectators broke into wild cheering, and believed 
the merciful battle won. But it was not so. The 
timbers were too strong; they did not yield. It was 
said that the man's death-grip still held fast to the 
bars after he was dead ; and that in this position the 
fires wrapped him about and consumed him. As to 
this, I do not know. What was seen, after I reco?- 

454 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

nized the face that was pleading through the bars, 
was seen by others, not by me. 

I saw that face, so situated, every night for a 
long time afterward; and I beHeved myself as guilty 
of the man's death as if I had given him the matches 
purposely that he might bum himself up with them. 
I had not a doubt that I should be hanged if my 
connection with this tragedy were found out. The 
happenings and the impressions of that time are 
burned into my memory, and the study of them 
entertains me as much now as they themselves dis- 
tressed me then. If anybody spoke of that grisly 
matter, I was all ears in a moment, and alert to hear 
what might be said, for I was always dreading and 
expecting to find out that I was suspected; and so 
fine and so delicate was the perception of my guilty 
conscience that it often detected suspicion in the 
most purposeless remarks, and in looks, gestures, 
glances of the eye, which had no significance, but 
which sent me shivering away in a panic of fright, 
just the same. And how sick it made me when 
somebody dropped, howsoever carelessly and barren 
of intent, the remark that "murder will out!" For 
a boy of ten years, I was carrying a pretty weighty 
cargo. 

All this time I was blessedly forgetting one thing — 
the fact that I was an inveterate talker in my sleep. 
But one night I awoke and found my bed-mate — 
my younger brother — sitting up in bed and contem- 
plating me by the light of the moon. I said : 

''What is the matter?" 

** You talk so much I can't sleep." 
455 



MARK TWAIN 

I came to a sitting posture in an instant, with my 
kidneys in my throat and my hair on end. 

"What did I say? Quick — out with it — ^what did 
I say?" 

"Nothing much." 
"It's a He — you know everything!" 
"Everything about what?" 
"You know well enough. About that.^^ 
"About what? I don't know what you are talking 
about. I think you are sick or crazy or something. 
But anyway, you're awake, and I'll get to sleep 
while I've got a chance." 

He fell asleep and I lay there in a cold sweat, turn- 
ing this new terror over in the whirling chaos which 
did duty as my mind. The burden of my thought 
was, How much did I divulge? How much does he 
know? What a distress is this uncertainty ! But by 
and by I evolved an idea — I would wake my brother 
and probe him with a supposititious case. I shook 
him up, and said: 

"Suppose a man should come to you dnmk — " 
"This is foolish — I never get drunk." 
"I don't mean you, idiot — I mean the man. Sup- 
pose a man should come to you drunk, and borrow 
a knife, or a tomahawk, or a pistol, and you forgot 
to tell him it was loaded, and — " 

"How could you load a tomahawk?" 
"I don't mean the tomahawk, and I didn't say the 
tomahawk; I said the pistol. Now, don't you keep 
breaking in that way, because this is serious. There's 
been a man killed." 

"What! In this town?" 
456 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

"Yes, in this town." 

"Well, go on — I won't say a single word." 

"Well, then, suppose you forgot to tell him to 
be careful with it, because it was loaded, and he 
went off and shot himself with that pistol — fooling 
with it, you know, and probably doing it by accident, 
being dnmk. Well, would it be murder?" 

"No — suicide." 

"No, no! I don't mean his act, I mean yotu-s. 
Would you be a murderer for letting him have that 
pistol?" 

After deep thought came this answer: 

"Well, I should think I was guilty of something — 
maybe murder — yes, probably murder, but I don't 
quite know." 

This made me very uncomfortable. However, it 
was not a decisive verdict. I should have to set out 
the real case — there seemed to be no other way. 
But I would do it cautiously, and keep a watch out 
for suspicious effects. I said: 

"I was supposing a case, but I am coming to the 
real one now. Do you know how the mian came to 
be burned up in the calaboose?'* 

"No." 

"Haven't you the least idea?" 

"Not the least." 

"Wish you may die in your tracks if you have?'* 

"Yes, wish I may die in my tracks." 

"Well, the way of it was this. The man wanted 
some matches to light his pipe. A boy got him 
some. The man set fire to the calaboose with those 
very matches, and burnt himself up." 

457 



MARK TWAIN 

"Is that so?'* 

' * Yes, it is. Now, is that boy a murderer, do you 
think?" 

''Let me see. The man was drunk?" 

'*Yes, he was drunk." 

"Very drunk?" 

"Yes." 

"And the boy knew it?" 

"Yes, he knew it." 

There was a long pause. Then came this heavy 
verdict : 

"If the man was drunk, and the boy knew it, 
the boy murdered that man. This is certain." 

Faint, sickening sensations crept along all the 
fibers of my body, and I seemed to know how a 
person feels who hears his death-sentence pronounced 
from the bench. I waited to hear what my brother 
would say next. I believed I knew what it would 
be, and I was right. He said: 

"I know the boy." 

I had nothing to say ; so I said nothing. I simply 
shuddered. Then he added: 

"Yes, before you got half through telling about 
the thing, I knew perfectly well who the boy was; 
it was Ben Coontz!" 

I came out of my collapse as one who rises from 
the dead. I said, with admiration: 

"Why, how in the world did you ever guess it?" 

"You told me in your sleep." 

I said to myself, "How splendid that is! This is 
a habit which must be cultivated." 

My brother rattled innocently on: 
4S8 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

"When you were talking in your sleep, you kept 
mumbling something about 'matches,' which I 
couldn't make anything out of; but just now, when 
you began to tell me about the man and the cala- 
boose and the matches, I remembered that in your 
sleep you mentioned Ben Coontz two or three times; 
so I put this and that together, you see, and right 
away I knew it was Ben that burnt that man up." 

I praised his sagacity effusively. Presently he 
asked : 

"Are you going to give him up to the law?" 

"No," I said, "I beHeve that this will be a lesson 
to him. I shall keep an eye on him, of course, for 
that is but right ; but if he stops where he is and re- 
forms, it shall never be said tl^at I betrayed him." 

"How good you are!" 

"Well, I try to be. It is all a person can do in a 
world like this." 

And now, my burden being shifted to other shoul- 
ders, my terrors soon faded away. 

The day before we left Hannibal, a curious thing 
fell under my notice — ^the surprising spread which 
longitudinal time undergoes there. I learned it 
from one of the most unostentatious of men — the 
colored coachman of a friend of mine, who lives three 
miles from town. He was to call for me at the 
Park Hotel at 7.30 p.m., and drive me out. But he 
missed it considerably — did not arrive till ten. He 
excused himself by saying: 

"De time is mos' an hour en a half slower in de 
country en what it is in de town; you'll be in plenty 
time, boss. Sometimes we shoves out early for 

459 



MARK TWAIN 

church, Sunday, en fetches up dah right plum in de 
middle er de sermon. Diffimce in de time. A body 
can't make no calculations 'bout it." 

I had lost two hours and a half; but I had learned 
a fact worth four. 



CHAPTER LVII 

AN ARCHANGEL 

FROM St. Louis northward there are all the en- 
livening signs of the presence of active, energetic, 
intelligent, prosperous, practical nineteenth-century 
populations. The people don't dream; they work. 
The happy result is manifest all around in the sub- 
stantial outside aspect of things, and the suggestions 
of wholesome life and comfort that everywhere appear. 

Quincy is a notable example — a brisk, handsome, 
well-ordered city; and now, as formerly, interested 
in art, letters, and other high things. 

But Marion City is an exception. Marion City 
has gone backward in a most unaccountable way. 
This metropolis promised so well that the projectors 
tacked "city" to its name in the very beginning, 
with full confidence; but it was bad prophecy. 
When I first saw Marion City, thirty-five years ago, 
it contained one street, and nearly or quite six 
houses. It contains but one house now, and this 
one, in a state of ruin, is getting ready to follow the 
former five into the river. 

Doubtless Marion City was too near to Quincy. 
It had another disadvantage: it was situated in a 
flat mud bottom, below high-water mark, whereas 
Qtdncy stands high up on the slope of a hill. 

461 



MARK TWAIN 

In the beginning Quincy had the aspect and ways 
of a model New England town: and these she has 
yet; broad, clean streets, trim, neat dwellings and 
lawns, fine mansions, stately blocks of commercial 
buildings. And there are ample fair-grounds, a well- 
kept park, and many attractive drives; library, 
reading-rooms, a couple of colleges, some handsome 
and costly chtirches, and a grand court-house, with 
grounds which occupy a square. The population of 
the city is thirty thousand. There are some large 
factories here, and manufacturing, of many sorts, is 
done on a great scale. 

La Grange and Canton are growing towns, but I 
missed Alexandria ; was told it was imder water, but 
would come up to blow in the summer. 

Keokuk was easily recognizable. I lived there in 
1857 — ^an extraordinary year there in real-estate 
matters. The "boom" was something wonderful. 
Everybody bought, everybody sold — except widows 
and preachers; they always hold on; and when the 
tide ebbs, they get left. Anything in the semblance 
of a town lot, no matter how situated, was salable, 
and at a figure which would still have been high if 
the ground had been sodded with greenbacks. 

The town has a population of fifteen thousand 
now, and is progressing with a healthy growth. It 
was night, and we could not see details, for which 
we were sorry, for Keokuk has the reputation of 
being a beautiful city. It was a pleasant one to live 
in long ago, and doubtless has advanced, not retro- 
graded, in that respect. 

A mighty work, which was in progress there in my 
462 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

day, is finished now. This is the canal over the 
Rapids. It is eight miles long, three hundred feet 
wide, and is in no place less than six feet deep. Its 
masonry is of the majestic kind which the War 
Department usually deals in, and will endure like a 
Roman aqueduct. The work cost four or five millions. 

After an hour or two spent with former friends, 
we started up the river again. Keokuk, a long time 
ago, was an occasional loafing-place of that erratic 
genius, Henry Clay Dean. I believe I never saw 
him but once; but he was much talked of when I 
lived there. This is what was said of him: 

He began life poor and without education. But 
he educated himself — on the curbstones of Keokuk. 
He would sit down on a curbstone with his book, 
careless or unconscious of the clatter of commerce 
and the tramp of the passing crowds, and bury him- 
self in his studies by the hour, never changing his 
position except to draw in his knees now and then 
to let a dray pass tmobstructed ; and when his book 
was finished, its contents, however abstruse, had been 
burned into his memory, and were his permanent 
possession. In this way he acquired a vast hoard of 
all sorts of learning, and had it pigeonholed in his 
head where he could put his intellectual hand on it 
whenever it was wanted. 

His clothes differed in no respect from a " wharf - 
rat's," except that they were raggeder, more ill- 
assorted and inharmonious (and therefore more ex- 
travagantly picturesque), and several layers dirtier. 
Nobody could infer the master-mind in the top of 
that edifice from the edifice itself. 

463 



MARK TWAIN 

He was an orator — ^by nature in the first place, and 
later by the training of experience and practice. 
When he was out on a canvass, his name was a lode- 
stone which drew the farmers to his stump from 
fifty miles around. His theme was always politics. 
He used no notes, for a volcano does not need notes. 
In 1862 a son of Keokuk's late distinguished citizen, 
Mr. Claggett, gave me this incident concerning 
Dean : 

The war feeling was running high in Keokuk (in 
'61), and a great mass-meeting was to be held on 
a certain day in the new Athenaeum. A distin- 
guished stranger was to address the house. After 
the building had been packed to its utmost capacity 
with sweltering folk of both sexes, the stage still 
remained vacant — the distinguished stranger had 
failed to connect. The crowd grew impatient, and 
by and by indignant and rebellious. About this 
time a distressed manager discovered Dean on a 
curbstone, explained the dilemma to him, took his 
book away from him, rushed him into the building 
the back way, and told him to make for the stage 
and save his country. 

Presently a sudden silence fell upon the grumbling 
audience, and everybody's eyes sought a single point 
— the wide, empty, carpetless stage. A figure ap- 
peared there whose aspect was familiar to hardly a 
dozen persons present. It was the scarecrow Dean 
— ^in foxy shoes, down at the heels; socks of odd 
colors, also "down"; damaged trousers, relics of 
antiquity and a world too short, exposing some inches 
of naked ankle; an unbuttoned vest, also too short, 

464 




"THE HOUSE BEGAN TO BREAK INTO APPLAUSE" 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

and exposing a zone of soiled and wrinkled linen be- 
tween it and the waist-band ; shirt-bosom open ; long 
black handkerchief, wound round and round the 
neck like a bandage; bob tailed blue coat, reaching 
down to the small of the back, with sleeves which 
left four inches of forearm unprotected; small, stiff - 
brimmed soldier-cap hung on a comer of the bump 
of — whichever bump it was. This figure moved 
gravely out upon the stage, and with sedate and 
measured step, down to the front, where it paused, 
and dreamily inspected the house, saying no word. 
The silence of surprise held its own for a moment, 
then was broken by a just audible ripple of merri- 
ment which swept the sea of faces like the wash of 
a wave. The figure remained as before, thought- 
fully inspecting. Another wave started — slaughter, 
this time. It was followed by another, then a third 
— this last one boisterous. 

And now the stranger stepped back one pace, took 
off his soldier-cap, tossed it into the wing, and began 
to speak with deliberation, nobody listening, every- 
body laughing and whispering. The speaker talked 
on unembarrassed, and presently delivered a shot 
which went home, and silence and attention resulted. 
He followed it quick and fast with other telling 
things; warmed to his work and began to pour his 
words out, instead of dripping them; grew hotter and 
hotter, and fell to discharging lightnings and thunder 
— and now the house began to break into applause, 
to which the speaker gave no heed, but went hammer- 
ing straight on ; unwound his black bandage and cast 
it away, still thundering; presently discarded the 

465 



MARK TWAIN 

bobtailed coat and flung it aside, firing up higher 
and higher all the time; finally flung the vest after 
the coat; and then for an untimed period stood there, 
like another Vesuvius, spouting smoke and flame, 
lava and ashes, raining ptimice-stone and cinders, 
shaking the moral earth with intellectual crash upon 
crash, explosion upon explosion, while the mad 
multitude stood upon their feet in a solid body, 
answering back with a ceaseless hurricane of cheers, 
through a thrashing snow-storm of waving hand- 
kerchiefs. 

''When Dean came,'* said Claggett, "the people 
thought he was an escaped limatic; but when he 
went, they thought he was an escaped archangel.'* 

Burlington, home of the sparkling Burdette, is 
another hill-city ; and also a beautiful one — unques- 
tionably so; a fine and flourishing city, with a popu- 
lation of twenty-five thousand, and belted with busy 
factories of nearly every imaginable description. It 
was a very sober city, too — for the moment — for a 
most sobering bill was pending; a bill to forbid the 
manufacture, exportation, importation, purchase, 
sale, borrowing, lending, stealing, drinking, smell- 
ing, or possession, by conquest, inheritance, intent, 
accident, or otherwise, in the state of Iowa, of each 
and every deleterious beverage known to the human 
race, except water. This measure was approved by 
all the rational people in the state; but not by the 
bench of judges. 

Burlington has the progressive modem city's full 
equipment of devices for right and intelligent govern- 
ment, including a paid fire department; a thing 

466 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

which the great city of New Orleans is without, but 
still employs that relic of antiquity, the independent 
system. 

In Burlington, as in all these Upper-River towns, 
one breathes a go-ahead atmosphere which tastes 
good in the nostrils. An opera-house has lately been 
built there which is in strong contrast with the shab- 
by dens which usually do duty as theaters in cities 
of Burlington's size. 

We had not time to go ashore in Muscatine, but 
had a dayhght view of it from the boat. I lived 
there awhile, many years ago, but the place, now, 
had a rather imfamiliar look; so I suppose it has 
clear outgrown the town which I used to know. In 
fact, I know it has; for I remember it as a small 
place — which it isn't now. But I remember it best 
for a lunatic who caught me out in the fields, one 
Sunday, and extracted a butcher-knife from his boot 
and proposed to carve me up with it, unless I 
acknowledged him to be the only son of the Devil. 
I tried to compromise on an acknowledgment that 
he was the only member of the family I had met; 
but that did not satisfy him; he wouldn't have any 
half -measures ; I must say he was the sole and only 
son of the Devil — and he whetted his knife on his 
boot. It did not seem worth while to make trouble 
about a little thing like that ; so I swimg round to his 
view of the matter and saved my skin whole. Shortly 
afterward, he went to visit his father; and as he has 
not turned up since, I trust he is there yet. 

And I remember Muscatine — still more pleasantly 
— for its summer sunsets. I have never seen any, 

467 



MARK TWAIN 

on either side of the ocean, that equaled them. They 
used the broad, smooth river as a canvas, and painted 
on it every imaginable dream of color, from the 
mottled daintinesses and delicacies of the opal, all 
the way up, through cumulative intensities, to blind- 
ing purple and crimson conflagrations, which were 
enchanting to the eye, but sharply tried it at the 
same time. All the Upper Mississippi region has 
these extraordinary sunsets as a familiar spectacle. 
It is the true Sunset Land: I am sure no other 
country can show so good a right to the name. The 
sunrises are also said to be exceedingly fine, I do 
not know. 



CHAPTER LVIII 

ON THE UPPER RIVER 

THE big towns drop in, thick and fast, now: and 
between stretch processions of thrifty farms, 
not desolate soHtude. Hour by hour, the boat plows 
deeper and deeper into the great and populous 
Northwest; and with each successive section of it 
which is revealed, one's surprise and respect gather 
emphasis and increase. Such a people, and such 
achievements as theirs, compel homage. This is an 
independent race who think for themselves, and who 
are competent to do it, because they are educated 
and enlightened; they read, they keep abreast of the 
best and newest thought; they fortify every weak 
place in their land with a school, a college, a library, 
and a newspaper ; and they live under law. Solicitude 
for the futtu*e of a race like this is not in order. 

This region is new; so new that it may be said 
to be still in its babyhood. By what it has accom- 
plished while still teething, one may forecast what 
marvels it will do in the strength of its maturity. 
It is so new that the foreign tourist has not heard 
of it yet; and has not visited it. For sixty years the 
foreign tourist has steamed up and down the river 
between St. Louis and New Orleans, and then gone 
home and written his book; believing he had seen 

469 



MARK TWAIN 

all of the river that was worth seeing or that had 
anything to see. In not six of all these books is 
there mention of these Upper-River towns — ^for the 
reason that the five or six tourists who penetrated 
this region did it before these towns were projected. 
The latest tourist of them all (1878) made the same 
old regulation trip — ^he had not heard that there was 
anything north of St. Louis. 

Yet there was. There was this amazing region, 
bristling with great towns, projected day before 
yesterday, so to speak, and built next morning. A 
score of them number from 1,500 to 5,000 people. 
Then we have Muscatine, 10,000; Winona, 10,000; 
Moline, 10,000; Rock Island, 12,000; La Crosse, 
12,000; Burlington, 25,000; Dubuque, 25,000; Daven- 
port, 30,000; St. Paul, 58,000; Minneapolis, 60,000 
and upward. 

The foreign totirist has never heard of these; 
there is no note of them in his books. They have 
sprung up in the night, while he slept. So new is 
this region that I, who am comparatively young, am 
yet older than it is. When I was bom St. Paul had 
a population of three persons; Minneapolis had just 
a third as many. The then population of Minne- 
apolis died two years ago ; and when he died he had 
seen himself undergo an increase, in forty years, of 
fifty-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine 
persons. He had a frog's fertility. 

I must explain that the figures set down above, 
as the population of St. Paul and Minneapolis, are 
several months old. These towns are far larger 
now. In fact, I have just seen a newspaper esti- 

470 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

mate, which gives the former seventy-one thousand 
and the latter seventy-eight thousand. This book 
will not reach the public for six or seven months 
yet; none of the figures will be worth much then. 

We had a glimpse at Davenport, which is another 
beautiful city, crowning a hill — a phrase which 
appHes to all these towns; for they are all comely, 
all well built, clean, orderly, pleasant to the eye, 
and cheering to the spirit; and they are all situated 
upon hills. Therefore we will give that phrase a 
rest. The Indians have a tradition that Marquette 
and Johet camped where Davenport now stands, in 
1673. The next white man who camped there, did 
it about a himdred and seventy years later — ^in 
1843. Davenport has gathered its thirty thousand 
people within the past thirty years. She sends 
more children to her schools now than her whole 
population numbered twenty-three years ago. She 
has the usual Upper-River quota of factories, news- 
papers, and institutions of learning; she has tele- 
phones, local telegraphs, an electric alarm, and an 
admirable paid fire department, consisting of six 
hook-and-ladder companies, four steam fire-engines, 
and thirty churches. Davenport is the official resi- 
dence of two bishops — Episcopal and Cathohc. 

Opposite Davenport is the floiuishing town of 
Rock Island, which lies at the foot of the Upper 
Rapids. A great railroad bridge connects the two 
towns — one of the thirteen which fret the Mississippi 
and the pilots between St. Louis and St. Paul. 

The charming island of Rock Island, three miles 
long and half a mile wide, belongs to the United 

471 



MARK TWAIN 

States, and the government has turned it into a 
wonderful park, enhancing its natural attractions by 
art, and threading its fine forests with many miles 
of drives. Near the center of the island one catches 
glimpses, through the trees, of ten vast stone four- 
story buildings, each of which covers an acre of 
ground. These are the government workshops; for 
the Rock Island establishment is a national armory 
and arsenal. 

We move up the river — always through enchant- 
ing scenery, there being no other kind on the Upper 
Mississippi — and pass Moline, a center of vast 
manufacturing industries; and Clinton and Lyons, 
great lumber centers ; and presently reach Dubuque, 
which is situated in a rich mineral region. The lead- 
mines are very productive, and of wide extent. 
Dubuque has a great number of manufacturing 
establishments; among them a plow factory, which 
has for customers all Christendom in general. At 
least so I was told by an agent of the concern who 
was on the boat. He said: 

"You show me any country under the sun where 
they really know how to plow, and if I don't show 
you our mark on the plow they use, I'll eat that 
plow; and I won't ask for any Woostershyre sauce 
to flavor it up with, either." 

All this part of the river is rich in Indian history 
and traditions. Black Hawk's was once a puissant 
name hereabouts; as was Keokuk's, further down. 
A few miles below Dubuque is the Tete de Mort — 
Death's-head rock, or bluff — to the top of which the 
French drove a band of Indians, in early times, and 

472 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

cooped them up there, with death for a certainty, 
and only the manner of it matter of choice — to 
starve, or jump off and kill themselves. Black Hawk 
adopted the ways of the white people toward the 
end of his life ; and when he died he was buried, near 
Des Moines, in Christian fashion, modified by Indian 
custom; that is to say, clothed in a Christian military 
uniform, and with a Christian cane in his hand, but 
deposited in the grave in a sitting posture. Formerly, 
a horse had always been buried with a chief. The 
substitution of the cane shows that Black Hawk's 
haughty nature was really humbled, and he expected 
to walk when he got over. 

We noticed that above Dubuque the water of the 
Mississippi was olive-green — rich and beautiful and 
semitransparent, with the sun on it. Of course the 
water was nowhere as clear or of as fine a complexion 
as it is in some other seasons of the year; for now it 
was at flood stage, and therefore dimmed and blurred 
by the mud manufactured from caving banks. 

The majestic bluffs that overlook the river, along 
through this region, charm one with the grace and 
variety of their forms, and the soft beauty of their 
adornment. The steep, verdant slope, whose base 
is at the water's edge, is topped by a lofty rampart 
of broken, turreted rocks, which are exquisitely rich 
and mellow in color — mainly dark browns and dull 
greens, but splashed with other tints. And then you 
have the shining river, winding here and there and 
yonder, its sweep interrupted at intervals by clusters 
of wooded islands threaded by silver channels; and 
you have glimpses of distant villages, asleep upon 

473 



MARK TWAIN 

capes ; and of stealthy rafts slipping along in the shade 
of the forest walls; and of white steamers vanishing 
around remote points. And it is all as tranquil and 
reposeful as dreamland, and has nothing this-worldly 
about it — nothing to hang a fret or a worry upon. 

Until the unholy train comes tearing along — which 
it presently does, ripping the sacred solitude to rags 
and tatters with its devil's war-whoop and the roar 
and thunder of its rushing wheels — and straightway 
you are back in this world, and with one of its frets 
ready to hand for your entertainment: for you re- 
member that this is the very road whose stock al- 
ways goes down after you buy it, and always goes 
up again as soon as you sell it. It makes me shudder 
to this day, to remember that I once came near not 
getting rid of my stock at all. It must be an awful 
thing to have a railroad left on your hands. 

The locomotive is in sight from the deck of the 
steamboat almost the whole 'way from St. Louis to 
St. Paul — eight hundred miles. These railroads have 
made havoc with the steamboat commerce. The 
clerk of our boat was a steamboat clerk before these 
roads were built. In that day the influx of popula- 
tion was so great, and the freight business so heavy, 
that the boats were not able to keep up with the 
demands made upon their carrying capacity; conse- 
quently the captains were very independent and 
airy — ^pretty "biggity," as Uncle Remus would say. 
The clerk nutshelled the contrast between the former 
time and the present, thus: 

"Boat used to land — captain on hurricane-roof — 
mighty stiff and straight — iron ramrod for a spine 

474 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

— ^kid gloves, plug tile, hair parted behind — man on 
shore takes off hat and says: 

'*'Got twenty-eight tons of wheat, cap'n — be 
great favor if you can take them.' 

"Captain says: 

***I'll take two of them' — and don't even conde- 
scend to look at him. 

''•But nowadays the captain takes off his old 
slouch, and smiles all the Vs^ay around to the back 
of his ears, and gets off a bow which he hasn't got 
any ramrod to interfere with, and says: 

'**Glad to see you, Smith, glad to see you — ^you're 
looking well — ^haven't seen you looking so well for 
years — what you got for us?' 

'"Nuth'n*,' says Smith; and keeps his hat on, and 
just turns his back and goes to talking with some- 
body else. 

"Oh, yes! eight years ago the captain was on top; 
but it's Smith's turn now. Eight years ago a boat 
used to go up the river with every stateroom full, and 
people piled five and six deep on the cabin floor; and 
a solid deck-load of immigrants and harvesters down 
below, into the bargain. To get a first-class state- 
room, you'd got to prove sixteen quarterings of 
nobihty and four hundred years of descent, or be 
personally acquainted with the nigger that blacked 
the captain's boots. But it's all changed now; 
plenty staterooms above, no harvesters below — 
there's a patent self-binder now, and they don't have 
harvesters any more; they've gone where the wood- 
bine twineth — and they didn't go by steamboat, 
either; went by the train." 

475 



MARK TWAIN 

Up in this region we met massed acres of lumber- 
rafts coming down — but not floating leisurely along, 
in the old-fashioned way, manned with joyous and 
reckless crews of fiddling, song-singing, whisky- 
drinking, breakdown-dancing rapscallions; no, the 
whole thing was shoved swiftly along by a powerful 
stem-wheeler, modern fashion; and the small crews 
were quiet, orderly men, of a sedate business aspect, 
with not a suggestion of romance about them any- 
where. 

Along here, somewhere, on a black night, we ran 
some exceedingly narrow and intricate island chutes 
by aid of the electric light. Behind was solid black- 
ness — a crackless bank of it; ahead, a narrow elbow 
of water, curving between dense walls of foliage that 
almost touched our bows on both sides; and here 
every individual leaf and every individual ripple 
stood out in its natural color, and flooded with a 
glare as of nooday intensified. The effect was 
strange and fine, and very striking. 

We passed Prairie du Chien, another of Father 
Marquette's camping-places; and after some hours 
of progress through varied and beautiful scenery, 
reached La Crosse. Here is a town of twelve or 
thirteen thousand population, with electric-lighted 
streets, and blocks of buildings which are stately 
enough, and also architecturally fine enough to com- 
mand respect in any city. It is a choice town, and 
we made satisfactory use of the hour allowed us, in 
roaming it over, though the weather was rainier 
than necessary. 



CHAPTER LIX 

LEGENDS AND SCENERY 

WE added several passengers to our list at 
La Crosse; among others an old gentleman 
who had come to this Northwestern region with the 
early settlers, and was familiar with every part of it. 
Pardonably proud of it, too. He said: 

"You'll find scenery between here and St. Paul 
that can give the Hudson points. You'll have the 
Queen's Bluff — seven hundred feet high, and just as 
imposing a spectacle as you can find anywheres ; and 
Trempeleau Island, which isn't like any other island 
in America, I believe, for it is a gigantic mountain, 
with precipitous sides, and is full of Indian tradi- 
tions, and used to be full of rattlesnakes ; if you catch 
the sun just right there, you wiU have a picture that 
will stay with you. And above Winona you'll have 
lovely prairies ; and then come the Thousand Islands, 
too beautiful for anything. Green? Why, you 
never saw foHage so green, nor packed so thick; it's 
like a thousand plush cushions afloat on a looking- 
glass — when the water's still; and then the mon- 
strous bluffs on both sides of the river — ^ragged, 
rugged, dark-complected — just the frame that's 
wanted ; you always want a strong frame, you know, 

477 



MARK TWAIN 

to throw up the nice points of a deHcate picture and 
make them stand out." 

The old gentleman also told us a touching Indian 
legend or two — but not very powerful ones. 

After this excursion into history, he came back to 
the scenery, and described it, detail by detail, from 
the Thousand Islands to St. Paul; naming its names 
with such facility, tripping along his theme with such 
nimble and confident ease, slamming in a three-ton 
word, here and there, with such a complacent air 
of 'tisn' t - anything, -I-can-do-it-any-time -I-want-to, 
and letting off fine surprises of lurid eloquence at such 
judicious intervals, that I presently began to sus- 
pect — 

But no matter what I began to suspect. Hear him : 

''Ten miles above Winona we come to Foimtain 
City, nestling sweetly at the feet of cliffs that lift 
their awful fronts, Jove-like, toward the blue depths 
of heaven, bathing them in virgin atmospheres that 
have known no other contact save that of angels' 
wings. 

"And next we glide through silver waters, amid 
lovely and stupendous aspects of natiu-e that attune 
our hearts to adoring admiration, about twelve miles, 
and strike Mount Vernon, six hundred feet high, with 
romantic ruins of a once first -class hotel perched far 
among the cloud shadows that mottle its dizzy 
heights — sole remnant of once-flourishing Mount 
Vernon, town of early days, now desolate and utterly 
deserted. 

"And so we move on. Past Chimney Rock we 
fly — noble shaft of six hundred feet ; then just before 

478 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

landing at Minnieska our attention is attracted by 
a most striking promontory rising over five hundred 
feet — the ideal mountain pyramid. Its conic shape, 
thickly wooded surface girding its sides, and its apex 
like that of a cone, cause the spectator to wonder at 
nature's workings. From its dizzy heights superb 
views of the forests, streams, bluffs, hills, and dales, 
below and beyond for miles, are brought within its 
focus. What grander river scenery can be conceived, 
as we gaze upon this enchanting landscape, from the 
uppermost point of these bluffs upon the valleys 
below? The primeval wildness and awful loneliness 
of these sublime creations of nature and nature's 
God, excite feelings of tmbounded admiration, and 
the recollection of which can never be effaced from 
the memory, as we view them in any direction. 

''Next we have the Lion's Head and the Lioness's 
Head, carved by nature's hand, to adorn and domi- 
nate the beauteous stream: and then anon the river 
widens, and a most charming and magnificent view 
of the valley before us suddenly bursts upon our 
vision; rugged hills, clad with verdant forests from 
summit to base, level prairie-lands, holding in their 
lap the beautifiil Wabasha, City of the Healing 
Waters, puissant foe of Bright's disease, and that 
grandest conception of nature's works, incomparable 
Lake Pepin — these constitute a picture whereon the 
toiuist's eye may gaze uncounted hoiu-s, with rapture 
imappeased and unappeasable. 

''And so we glide along: in due time encountering 
those majestic domes, the mighty Sugar Loaf, and 
the sublime Maiden's Rock — which latter, romantic 

479 



MARK TWAIN 

superstition has invested with a voice ; and of ttimes 
as the birch canoe ghdes near, at twiHght, the dusky 
paddler fancies he hears the soft sweet music of the 
long-departed Winona, darhng of Indian song and 
story. 

**Then Frontenac looms upon our vision, delight- 
ful resort of jaded summer tourists ; then progressive 
Red Wing; and Diamond Bluff, impressive and pre- 
ponderous in its lone sublimity; then Prescott and 
the St. Croix; and anon we see bursting upon us the 
domes and steeples of St. Paul, giant young chief of 
the North, marching with seven-league stride in the 
van of progress, banner-bearer of the highest and 
newest civilization, carving his beneficent way with 
the tomahawk of commercial enterprise, sounding the 
war-whoop of Christian culture, tearing off the 
reeking scalp of sloth and superstition to plant there 
the steam -plow and the schoolhouse — ever in his 
front stretch arid lawlessness, ignorance, crime, 
despair; ever in his wake bloom the jail, the gallows, 
and the pulpit; and ever — " 

*'Have you ever traveled with a panorama?" 

"I have formerly served in that capacity." 

My suspicion was confirmed. 

"Do you still travel with it?" 

"No, she is laid up till the fall season opens. I 
am helping now to work up the materials for a 
Tourists* Guide which the St. Louis and St. Paul 
Packet Company are going to issue this summer for 
the benefit of travelers who go by that line." 

"When you were talking of Maiden's Rock, you 
spoke of the long-departed Winona, darling of Indian 

480 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

song and story. Is she the maiden of the rock? — 
and are the two connected by legend?" 

** Yes, and a very tragic and painful one. Perhaps 
the most celebrated, as weU as the most pathetic, of 
all the legends of the Mississippi." 

We asked him to tell it. He dropped out of his 
conversational vein and back into his lecture gait 
without an effort, and rolled on as foUows : 

''A Httle distance above Lake City is a famous 
point known as Maiden's Rock, which is not only a 
picturesque spot, but is full of romantic interest from 
the event which gave it its name. Not many years 
ago this locahty was a favorite resort for the Sioux 
Indians on account of the fine fishing and hunting to 
be had there, and large nimibers of them were always 
to be found in this locality. Among the families 
which used to resort here was one belonging to the 
tribe of Wabasha. We-no-na (firstborn) was the 
name of a maiden w^ho had plighted her troth to a 
lover belonging to the same band. But her stern 
parents had promised her hand to another, a famous 
warrior, and insisted on her wedding him. The day 
was fixed by her parents, to her great grief. She 
appeared to accede to the proposal and accompanied 
them to the rock, for the purpose of gathering flowers 
for the feast. On reaching the rock, We-no-na ran 
to its summit, and, standing on its edge, upbraided 
her parents who were below, for their cruelty, and 
then, singing a death-dirge, threw herself from the 
precipice and dashed them in pieces on the rock 
below." 

"Dashed who in pieces — ^her parents?" 
481 



MARK TWAIN 

**Well, it certainly was a tragic business, as you 
say. And moreover, there is a startling kind of 
dramatic surprise about it which I was not looking 
for. It is a distinct improvement upon the thread- 
bare form of Indian legend. There are fifty Lover's 
Leaps along the Mississippi from whose summit dis- 
appointed Indian girls have jumped, but this is the 
only jump in the lot that turned out in the right and 
satisfactory way. What became of Winona?" 

"She was a good deal jarred up and jolted: but 
she got herself together and disappeared before the 
coroner reached the fatal spot; and 'tis said she 
sought and married her true love, and wandered with 
him to some distant clime, where she lived happy 
ever after, her gentle spirit mellowed and chastened 
by the romantic incident which had so early deprived 
her of the sweet guidance of a mother's love and a 
father's protecting arm, and thrown her, all un- 
friended, upon the cold charity of a censorious world." 

I was glad to hear the lecturer's description of the 
scenery, for it assisted my appreciation of what I 
saw of it, and enabled me to imagine such of it as 
we lost by the intrusion of night. 

As the lecturer remarked, this whole region is 
blanketed with Indian tales and traditions. But I 
reminded him that people usually merely mentioned 
this fact — doing it in a way to make a body's mouth 
water — and judiciously stopped there. Why? Be- 
cause the impression left was that these tales were 
full of incident and imagination — a pleasant im- 
pression which would be promptly dissipated if the 

482 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

tales were told. I showed him a lot of this sort of 
literature which I had been collecting, and he con- 
fessed that it was poor stuff, exceedingly sorry rub- 
bish; and I ventured to add that the legends which 
he had himself told us were of this character, with 
the single exception of the admirable story of Winona. 
He granted these facts, but said that if I would hunt 
up Mr. Schoolcraft's book, published near fifty years 
ago, and now doubtless out of print, I would find 
some Indian inventions in it that were very far from 
being barren of incident and imagination; that the 
tales in "Hiawatha" were of this sort, and they 
came from Schoolcraft's book; and that there were 
others in the same book which Mr. Longfellow could 
have turned into verse with good effect. For in- 
stance, there was the legend of "The Undying 
Head." He could not tell it, for many of the details 
had grown dim in his memory; but he would recom- 
mend me to find it and enlarge my respect for the 
Indian imagination. He said that this tale, and 
most of the others in the book, were current among 
the Indians along this part of the Mississippi when 
he first came here; and that the contributors to 
Schoolcraft's book had got them directly from 
Indian lips, and had written them down with strict 
exactness, and without embellishments of their own. 
I have found the book. The lecturer was right. 
There are several legends in it which confirm what 
he said. I will offer two of them — "The Undying 
Head," and "Peboan and Seegwun, an Allegory of 
the Seasons." The latter is used in "Hiawatha"; 
but it is worth reading in the original form, if only 

483 



MARK TWAIN 

that one may see how effective a genuine poem can 
be without the helps and graces of poetic measure 
and rhythm : 

PEBOAN AND SEEGWUN 

An old man was sitting alone in his lodge, by the side of a 
frozen stream. It was the close of winter, and his fire was al- 
most out. He appeared very old and very desolate. His locks 
were white with age, and he trembled in every joint. Day after 
day passed in solitude, and he heard nothing but the sound of 
the tempest, sweeping before it the new-fallen snow. 

One day, as his fire was just dying, a handsome young man 
approached and entered his dwelling. His cheeks were red with 
the blood of youth, his eyes sparkled with animation, and a smile 
played upon his lips. He wallced with a light and quick step. 
His forehead was bound with a wreath of sweet grass, in place 
of a warrior's frontlet, and he carried a bunch of flowers in his 
hand. 

"Ah, my son!" said the old man, "I am happy to see you. 
Come in! Come and tell me of your adventures, and what 
strange lands you have been to see. Let us pass the night 
together. I will tell you of my prowess and exploits, and what 
I can perform. You shall do the same, and we will amuse 
ourselves." 

He then drew from his sack a curiously wrought antique pipe, 
and having filled it with tobacco, rendered mild by a mixture 
of certain leaves, handed it to his guest. When this ceremony 
was concluded they began to speak. 

"I blow my breath," said the old man, ''and the stream 
stands still. The water becomes stiff and hard as clear stone." 

"I breathe," said the young man, "and flowers spring up over 
the plain." 

"I shake my locks," retorted the old man, "and snow covers 
the land. The leaves fall from the trees at my command, and 
my breath blows them away. The birds get up from the water, 
and fly to a distant land. The animals hide themselves from 
my breath, and the very ground becomes as hard as flint." 

"I shake my ringlets," rejoined the young man, "and warm 
showers of soft rain fall upon the earth. The plants lift up their 
heads out of the earth, like the eyes of children glistening with 

484 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

delight. My voice recalls the birds. The warmth of my 
breath unlocks the streams. I^Iusic fills the groves wherever 
I walk, and all nature rejoices." 

At length the sun began to rise. A gentle warmth came over 
the place. The tongue of the old man became silent. The 
robin and bluebird began to sing on the top of the lodge. The 
stream began to murmur by the door, and the fragrance of grow- 
ing herbs and flowers came softly on the vernal breeze. 

Daylight fully revealed to the young man the character of 
his entertainer. When he looked upon him, he had the icy 
visage of Pehoan} Streams began to flow from his eyes. As 
the sun increased, he grew less and less in stature, and anon had 
melted completely away. Nothing remained on the place of his 
lodge fire but the miskodeed,^ a small white flower, with a pink 
border, which is one of the earliest species of northern plants. 

"The Undying Head" is a rather long tale, but it 
makes up in weird conceits, fairy-tale prodigies, 
variety of incident, and energy of movement, for 
what it lacks in brevity.^ 

* Winter. * The trailing arbutus. ^ See Appendix D. 



CHAPTER LX 

SPECULATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS 

WE reached St. Paul, at the head of navigation 
of the Mississippi, and there our voyage of 
two thousand miles from New Orleans ended. It is 
about a ten-day trip by steamer. It can probably 
be done quicker by rail. I judge so because I know 
that one may go by rail from St. Louis to Hannibal 
— a distance of at least a hundred and twenty miles 
— in seven hours. This is better than walking; 
unless one is in a hurry. 

The season being far advanced when we were in 
New Orleans, the roses and magnolia blossoms were 
falling; but here in St. Paul it was the snow. In 
New Orleans we had caught an occasional withering 
breath from over a crater, apparently; here in St. 
Paul we caught a frequent benumbing one from over 
a glacier, apparently. 

I am not trying to astonish by these statistics. 
No, it is only natural that there should be a sharp 
difference between climates which lie upon parallels 
of latitude which are one or two thousand miles 
apart. I take this position, and I will hold it and 
maintain it in spite of the newspapers. The news- 
paper thinks it isn't a natural thing; and once a 
year, in February, it remarks, with iU-concealed 

486 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

exclamation-points, that while we, away up here, are 
fighting snow and ice, folks are having new straw- 
berries and peas down South; callas are blooming 
out-of-doors, and the people are complaining of the 
warm weather. The newspaper never gets done 
being surprised about it. It is caught regularly 
every February. There must be a reason for this; 
and this reason must be change of hands at the 
editorial desk. You cannot surprise an individual 
more than twice with the same marvel — not even 
with the February miracles of the Southern climate; 
but if you keep putting new hands at the editorial 
desk every year or two, and forget to vaccinate them 
against the annual climatic surprise, that same old 
thing is going to occur right along. Each year one 
new hand will have the disease, and be safe from 
its recurrence ; but this does not save the newspaper. 
No, the newspaper is in as bad case as ever; it will 
forever have its new hand; and so, it will break out 
with the strawberry surprise every February as long 
as it lives. The new hand is curable; the newspaper 
itself is incurable. An act of Congress — no. Congress 
could not prohibit the strawberry surprise without 
questionably stretching its powers. An amendment 
to the Constitution might fix the thing, and that is 
probably the best and quickest way to get at it. 
Under authority of such an amendment, Congress 
could then pass an act inflicting imprisonment for 
life for the first offense, and some sort of lingering 
death for subsequent ones; and this, no doubt, would 
presently give us a rest. At the same time, the 
amendment and the resulting act and penalties might 

487 



MARK TWAIN 

easily be made to cover various cognate abuses, 
such as the Annual - Veteran - who - has - Voted - for- 
Every - President - from - Washington - down, - and- 
Walked - to - the - Polls - Yesterday - with - as - B right - an- 
Eye-and-as-Firm-a-Step-as-Ever, and ten or eleven 
other weary yearly marvels of that sort, and of the 
Oldest-Freemason, and Oldest-Printer, and Oldest- 
Baptist-Preacher, and Oldest-Alumnus sort, and 
Three-Children-Bom-at-a-Birth sort, and so on, and 
so on. And then England would take it up and pass 
a law prohibiting the further use of Sidney Smith's 
jokes, and appointing a commissioner to construct 
some new ones. Then life would be a sweet dream 
of rest and peace, and the nations would cease to 
long for heaven. 

But I wander from my theme. St. Paul is a won- 
derful town. It is put together in solid blocks of 
honest brick and stone, and has the air of intending 
to stay. Its post-office was established thirty-six 
years ago; and by and by, when the postmaster 
received a letter, he carried it to Washington, horse- 
back, to inquire what was to be done with it. Such 
is the legend. Two frame houses were built that 
year, and several persons were added to the popula- 
tion. A recent number of the leading St. Paul 
paper, the Pioneer Press, gives some statistics which 
furnish a vivid contrast to that old state of things, 
to wit: Population, autumn of the present year 
(1882), 71,000; number of letters handled, first half 
of the year, 1,209,387 ; number of houses built during 
three-quarters of the year, 989; their cost, $3,186,000. 
The increase of letters over the corresponding six 

488 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

months of last year was fifty per cent. Last year 
the new buildings added to the city cost above 
$4,500,000. St. Paul's strength lies in her commerce 
— I mean his commerce. He is a manufacturing city, 
of course — all cities of that region are — but he is pe- 
culiarly strong in the matter of commerce. Last year 
his jobbing trade amounted to upward of $52,000,000. 

He has a custom-house, and is building a costly 
capitol to replace the one recently burned — for he 
is the capital of the state. He has churches with- 
out end ; and not the cheap poor kind, but the kind 
that the rich Protestant puts up, the kind that the 
poor Irish "hired girl" delights to erect. What a 
passion for building majestic churches the Irish 
hired girl has ! It is a fine thing for our architecture ; 
but too often we enjoy her stately fanes without 
giving her a grateful thought. In fact, instead of 
reflecting that "every brick and every stone in this 
beautiful edifice represents an ache or a pain, and 
a handful of sweat, and hours of heavy fatigue, con- 
tributed by the back and forehead and bones of 
poverty," it is our habit to forget these things en- 
tirely, and merely glorify the mighty temple itself, 
without vouchsafing one praiseful thought to its 
himible builder, whose rich heart and withered purse 
it symbolizes. 

This is a land of libraries and schools. St. Paul 
has three public libraries, and they contain, in the 
aggregate, some forty thousand books. He has one 
hundred and sixteen schoolhouses, and pays out 
more than seventy thousand dollars a year in teach- 
ers' salaries. 

489 



MARK TWAIN 

There is an unusually fine railway-station ; so large 
is it, in fact, that it seemed somewhat overdone, in 
the matter of size, at first; but at the end of a few 
months it was perceived that the mistake was dis- 
tinctly the other way. The error is to be corrected. 

The town stands on high ground; it is about 
seven hundred feet above the sea-level. It is so high 
that a wide view of river and lowland is offered from 
its streets. 

It is a very wonderful town, indeed, and is not 
finished yet. All the streets are obstructed with 
building-material, and this is being compacted into 
houses as fast as possible, to make room for more — 
for other people are anxious to build, as soon as 
they can get the use of the streets to pile up their 
bricks and stuff in. 

How solemn and beautiful is the thought that the 
earliest pioneer of civilization, the van-leader of 
civilization, is never the steamboat, never the rail- 
road, never the newspaper, never the Sabbath- 
school, never the missionary — ^but always whisky! 
Such is the case. Look history over; you will see. 
The missionary comes after the whisky — I mean he 
arrives after the whisky has arrived; next comes the 
poor immigrant, with ax and hoe and rifle; next, the 
trader; next, the miscellaneous rush; next, the gam- 
bler, the desperado, the highwayman, and all their 
kindred in sin of both sexes; and next, the smart 
chap who has bought up an old grant that covers 
all the land; this brings the lawyer tribe; the vigi- 
lance committee brings the imdertaker. All these 
interests bring the newspaper; the newspaper starts 

490 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

up politics and a railroad; all hands turn to and 
build a church and a jail — and behold ! civilization is 
established forever in the land. But whisky, you 
see, was the van-leader in this beneficent work. It 
always is. It was like a foreigner — and excusable in 
a foreigner — to be ignorant of this great truth, and 
wander off into astronomy to borrow a symbol. But 
if he had been conversant with the facts, he would 
have said : 

Westward the Jug of Empire takes its way. 

This great van-leader arrived upon the ground 
which St. Patd now occupies, in June, 1837. Yes, at 
that date, Pierre Parrant, a Canadian, built the first 
cabin, uncorked his jug, and began to sell whisky 
to the Indians. The result is before us. 

All that I have said of the newness, briskness, 
swift progress, wealth, intelligence, fine and sub- 
stantial architecttire, and general slash and go and 
energy of St. Paul, will apply to his near neighbor, 
Minneapolis — with the addition that the latter is the 
bigger of the two cities. 

These extraordinary towns were ten miles apart 
a few months ago, but were growing so fast that they 
may possibly be joined now and getting along imder 
a single mayor. At any rate, within five years from 
now there will be at least such a substantial liga- 
ment of buildings stretching between them and 
uniting them that a stranger will not be able to tell 
where the one Siamese twin leaves off and the other 
begins. Combined, they will then number a popu- 
lation cf two hundred and fifty thousand, if they con- 

491 



MARK TWAIN 

tinue to grow as they are now growing. Thus, tnis 
center of population, at the head of Mississippi 
navigation, will then begin a rivalry as to numbers 
with that center of population at the foot of it — 
New Orleans. 

Minneapolis is situated at the falls of St. Anthony, 
which stretch across the river fifteen hundred feet, 
and have a fall of eighty-two feet — a water-power 
which, by art, has been made of inestimable value, 
businesswise, though somewhat to the damage of the 
Falls as a spectacle, or as a background against which 
to get your photograph taken. 

Thirty flouring-mills turn out two million barrels 
of the very choicest of flour every year; twenty saw- 
mills produce two hundred million feet of lumber 
annually; then there are woolen-mills, cotton-mills, 
paper and oil mills; and sash, nail, furniture, barrel, 
and other factories, without number, so to speak. 
The great flouring-mills here and at St. Paul use the 
"new process" and mash the wheat by rolling, 
instead of grinding it. 

Sixteen railroads meet in Minneapolis, and sixty- 
five passenger-trains arrive and depart daily. 

In this place, as in St. Paul, journalism thrives. 
Here there are three great dailies, ten weekHes, and 
three monthlies. 

There is a university, with four hundred students 
— and, better still, its good efforts are not confined 
to enlightening the one sex. There are sixteen 
public schools, with buildings which cost five hundred 
thousand dollars; there are six thousand pupils and 
one hundred and twenty-eight teachers. There are 

492 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

also seventy churches existing, and a lot more pro- 
jected. The banks aggregate a capital of three 
million dollars, and the wholesale jobbing trade of 
the town amounts to fifty million dollars a year. 

Near St. Paul and Minneapolis are several points 
of interest — Fort Snelling, a fortress occupying a 
river blufi a hundred feet high; the falls of Minne- 
haha; White-bear Lake, and so forth. The beautiful 
falls of Minnehaha are sufficiently celebrated — they 
do not need a lift from me, in that direction. The 
White-bear Lake is less known. It is a lovely sheet 
of water, and is being utilized as a summer resort by 
the wealth and fashion of the state. It has its club- 
house, and its hotel, with the modem improvements 
and conveniences; its fine siunmer residences; and 
plenty of fishing, hunting, and pleasant drives. There 
are a dozen minor summer resorts around about 
St. Paul and Minneapolis, but the White-bear Lake 
is the resort. Connected with White-bear Lake is a 
most idiotic Indian legend. I would resist the 
temptation to print it here, if I could, but the task 
is beyond my strength. The guide-book names the 
preserver of the legend, and compliments his "facile 
pen." Without further comment or delay then, let 
us turn the said facile pen loose upon the reader: 

A LEGEND OF WHITE-BEAR LAKE 

Every spring, for perhaps a century, or as long as there has 
been a nation of red men, an island in the middle of White-bear 
Lake has been visited by a band of Indians for the purpose of 
making maple-sugar. 

Tradition says that many springs ago, while upon this island, 
a young warrior loved and wooed the daughter of his chief, and 

493 



MARK TWAIN 

it is said, also, the maiden loved the warrior. He had again 
and again been refused her hand by her parents, the old chief 
alleging that he was no brave, and his old consort called him a 
woman! 

The sun had again set upon the "sugar-bush," and the bright 
moon rose high in the bright blue heavens, when the young 
warrior took down his flute and went out alone, once more to 
sing the story of his love; the mild breeze gently moved the two 
gay feathers in his head-dress, and as he mounted on the trunk 
of a leaning tree, the damp snow fell from his feet heavily. As 
he raised his flute to his lips, his blanket slipped from his well- 
formed shoulders, and lay partly on the snow beneath. He 
began his weird, wild love song, but soon felt that he was cold, 
and as he reached back for his blanket, some unseen hand laid 
it gently on his shoulders; it was the hand of his love, his guardian 
angel. She took her place beside him, and for the present they 
were happy; for the Indian has a heart to love, and in this 
pride he is as noble as in his own freedom, which makes him the 
child of the forest. As the legend runs, a large white bear, 
thinking, perhaps, that polar snows and dismal winter weather 
extended everywhere, took up his journey southward. He at 
length approached the northern shore of the lake which now 
bears his name, walked down the bank, and made his way 
noiselessly through the deep heavy snow toward the island. 
It was the same spring ensuing that the lovers met. They had 
left their first retreat, and were now seated among the branches 
of a large elm which hung far over the lake (The same tree is 
still standing, and excites universal curiosity and interest.) For 
fear of being detected they talked almost in a whisper, and now, 
that they might get back to camp in good time and thereby 
avoid suspicion, they were just rising to return, when the maiden 
uttered a shriek which was heard at the camp, and bounding 
toward the young brave, she caught his blanket, but missed the 
direction of her foot and fell, bearing the blanket with her into 
the great arms of the ferocious monster. Instantly every man, 
woman, and child of the band were upon the bank, but all im- 
armed. Cries and wailings went up from every mouth. What 
was to be done? In the mean time this white and savage beast 
held the breathless maiden in his huge grasp, and fondled with 
his precious prey as if he were used to scenes like this. One 
deafening yell from the lover warrior is heard above the cries 

494 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

of hundreds of his tribe, and dashing away to his wigwam he 
grasps his faithful knife, returns ahnost at a single bound to the 
scene of fear and fright, rushes out along the leaning tree to the 
spot where his treasure fell, and springing with the fury of a 
mad panther, pounced upon his prey. The animal turned, and 
with one stroke of his huge paw brought the lovers heart to 
heart, but the next moment the warrior, with one plunge of the 
blade of his knife, opened the crimson sluices of death, and the 
dying bear relaxed his hold. 

That night there was no more sleep for the band or the lovers, 
and as the young and the old danced about the carcass of the 
dead monster, the gallant warrior was presented with another 
plume, and ere another moon had set he had a living treasure 
added to his heart. Their children for many years played upon 
the skin of the white bear — from which the lake derives its 
name — and the maiden and the brave remembered long the 
fearful scene and rescue that made them one, for Kis-se-me-pa 
and Ka-go-ka could never forget their fearful encounter with 
the huge monster that came so near sending them to the happy 
hunting-ground. 

It is a perplexing business. First, she fell down 
out of the tree — she and the blanket; and the bear 
caught her and fondled her — ^her and the blanket; 
then she fell up into the tree again — leaving the 
blanket ; meantime the lover goes war- whooping home 
and comes back "heeled," climbs the tree, jumps 
down on the bear, the girl jumps down after him — 
apparently, for she was up the tree — resumes her 
place in the bear's arms along with the blanket, the 
lover rams his knife into the bear, and saves — whom ? 
The blanket? No — nothing of the sort. You get 
yourself all worked up and excited about that blan- 
ket, and then all of a sudden, just when a happy 
climax seems imminent, you are let down fiat — 
nothing saved but the girl! Whereas, one is not 
interested in the girl; she is not the prominent feature 

495 



MARK TWAIN 

of the legend. Nevertheless, there you are left, and 
there you must remain; for if you live a thousand 
years you will never know who got the blanket. A 
dead man could get up a better legend than this one. 
I don't mean a fresh dead man either; I mean a man 
that's been dead weeks and weeks. 

We struck the home-trail now, and in a few hours 
were in that astonishing Chicago — a city where they 
are always rubbing the lamp, and fetching up the 
genii, and contri\HLng and achieving new impossi- 
bilities. It is hopeless for the occasional visitor to 
try to keep up with Chicago — she outgrows his 
prophecies faster than he can make them. She is 
always a novelty, for she is never the Chicago you 
saw when you passed through the last time. The 
Pennsylvania road rushed us to New York without 
missing schedtde time ten minutes anywhere on the 
route; and there ended one of the most enjoyable 
five-thousand-mile joiu*neys I have ever had the good 
fortune to make. 



A'PPENDIX 

A 

[From the New Orleans Times-Democrat of March sg, 1882] 

VOYAGE OF THE "TIMES-DEMOCRAT'S" RELIEF- 
BOAT THROUGH THE INUNDATED REGIONS 

It was nine o'clock Thursday morning when the Susie left the 
Mississippi and entered Old River, or what is now called the 
mouth of the Red. Ascending on the left, a flood was pouring 
in through and over the levees on the Chandler plantation, the 
most northern point in Point Coupee parish. The water com- 
pletely covered the place, although the levees had given way 
but a short time before. The stock had been gathered in a 
large fiatboat, where, without food, as we passed, the animals 
were huddled together, waiting for a boat to tow them off. On 
the right-hand side of the river is Tumbull's Island, and on it 
is a large plantation which formerly was pronounced one of 
the most fertile in the state. The water has hitherto allowed 
it to go scot-free in usual floods, but now broad sheets of water 
told only where fields were. The top of the protective levee 
could be seen here and there, but nearly all of it was submerged. 

The trees have put on a greener foliage since the water has 
poured in, and the woods look bright and fresh, but this pleasant 
aspect to the eye is neutralized by the interminable waste of 
water. We pass mile after mile, and it is nothing but trees 
standing up to their branches in water. A water-turkey now 
and again rises and flies ahead into the long avenue of silence. 
A pirogue sometimes flits from the bushes and crosses the Red 
River on its way out to the Mississippi, but the sad-faced pad- 

497 



MARK TWAIN 

dlers never turn their heads to look at our boat. The puffing 
of the boat is music in this gloom, which affects one most curi- 
ously. It is not the gloom of deep forests or dark caverns, but 
a peculiar kind of solemn silence and impressive awe that holds 
one perforce to its recognition. We passed two negro families 
on a raft tied up in the willows this morning. They were 
evidently of the well-to-do class, as they had a supply of meal 
and three or four hogs with them. Their rafts were about 
twenty feet square, and in front of an improvised shelter earth 
had been placed, on which they built their fire. 

The current running down the Atchafalaya was very swift, the 
Mississippi showing a predilection in that direction, which needs 
only to be seen to enforce the opinion of that river's desperate 
endeavors to find a short way to the Gulf. Small boats, skiffs, 
pirogues, etc., are in great demand, and many have been stolen 
by piratical negroes, who take them where they will bring the 
greatest price. From what was told me by Mr. C. P. Ferguson, 
a planter near Red River Landing, whose place had just gone 
imder, there is much suffering in the rear of that place. The 
negroes had given up all thoughts of a crevasse there, as the 
upper levee had stood so long, and when it did come they were 
at its mercy. On Thiu-sday a number were taken out of trees 
and off cabin roofs and brought in, many yet remaining. 

One does not appreciate the sight of earth until he has traveled 
through a flood. At sea one does not expect or look for it, but 
here with fluttering leaves, shadowy forest aisles, housetops 
barely visible, it is expected. In fact, a graveyard, if the 
mounds were above water, would be appreciated. The river 
here is known only because there is an opening in the trees, and 
that is all. It is in width, from Fort Adams on the left bank 
of the Mississippi to the bank of Rapides Parish, a distance of 
about sixty miles. A large portion of this was under cultivation, 
particularly along the Mississippi and back of the Red. When 
Red River proper was entered, a strong current was running 
directly across it, pursuing the same direction as that of the 
Mississippi. 

After a run of some hours, Black River was reached. Hardly 
was it entered before signs of suffering became visible. All the 
willows along the banks were stripped of their leaves. One 
man, whom your correspondent spoke to, said that he had had 
one hundred and fifty head of cattle and one hundred head of 

498 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

hogs. At the first appearance of water he had started to drive 
them to the highlands of Avoyelles, thirty-five miles off, but he 
lost fifty head of the beef cattle and sixty hogs. Black River is 
quite picturesque, even if its shores are under water. A dense 
growth of ash, oak, gum, and hickory makes the shores almost 
impenetrable, and where one can get a view down some avenue 
in the trees, only the dim outlines of distant trunks can be barely 
distinguished in the gloom. 

A few miles up this river, the depth of water on the banks 
was fully eight feet, and on all sides could be seen, still holding 
against the strong current, the tops of cabins. Here and there 
one overturned was surrounded by driftwood, forming the nucleus 
of possibly some future island. 

In order to save coal, as it was impossible to get that fuel 
at any point to be touched during the expedition, a lookout 
was kept for a wood-pile. On rounding a point a pirogue, 
skilfully paddled by a youth, shot out, and in its bow was a 
girl of fifteen, of fair face, beautiful black eyes, and demure 
manners. The boy asked for a paper, which was thrown to 
him, and the couple pushed their tiny craft out into the swell 
of the boat. 

Presently a Httle girl, not certainly over twelve years, paddled 
out in the smallest little canoe and handled it with all the deft- 
ness of an old voyageur. The httle one looked more like an 
Indian than a white child, and laughed when asked if she were 
afraid. She had been raised in a pirogue and could go anywhere. 
She was bound out to pick willow leaves for the stock, and she 
pointed to a house near by with water three inches deep on the 
floors. At its back door was moored a raft about thirty feet 
square, with a sort of fence built upon it, and inside of this some 
sixteen cows and twenty hogs were standing. The family did 
not complain, except on account of losing their stock, and 
promptly brought a supply of wood in a flat. 

From this point to the Mississippi River, fifteen miles, there 
is not a spot of earth above water, and to the westward for 
thirty-five miles there is nothing but the river's flood. Black 
River had risen during Thursday, the 23d, one and three- 
quarters inches, and w^as going up at night still. As we 
progress up the river habitations become more frequent, but 
are yet still miles apart. Nearly all of them are deserted, 
and the outhouses floated off. To add to the gloom, almost 

499 



MARK TWAIN 

every living thing seems to have departed, and not a whistle 
of a bird nor the bark of a squirrel can be heard in the 
solitude. Sometimes a morose gar will throw his tail aloft 
and disappear in the river, but beyond this everything is 
quiet — ^the quiet of desolation. Down the river floats now a 
neatly whitewashed hen-house, then a cluster of neatly split 
fence-rails, or a door and a bloated carcass, solemnly guarded by 
a pair of buzzards — ^the only bird to be seen — ^which feast on 
the carcass as it bears them along. A picture-frame, in which 
there was a cheap lithograph of a soldier on horseback, as it 
floated on told of some hearth invaded by the water and despoiled 
of this ornament. 

At dark, as it was not prudent to run, a place alongside the 
woods was hunted, and to a tall gtun tree the boat was made 
fast for the night. 

A pretty quarter of the moon threw a pleasant light over forest 
and river, making a picture that would be a delightful piece of 
landscape study, could an artist only hold it down to his canvas. 
The motion of the engines had ceased, the puffing of the escaping 
steam was stilled, and the enveloping silence closed upon us, and 
such silence it was! Usually in a forest at night one can hear 
the piping of frogs, the hum of insects, or the dropping of limbs; 
but here Nature was dumb. The dark recesses, those aisles 
into this cathedral, gave forth no sound, and even the ripplings 
of the current die away. 

At daylight, Friday morning, all hands were up, and up the 
Black we started. The morning was a beautiful one, and the 
river, which is remarkably straight, put on its loveliest garb. 
The blossoms of the haw perfumed the air deliciously, and a 
few birds whistled blithely along the banks. The trees were 
larger, and the forest seemed of older growth than below. More 
fields were passed than nearer the mouth, but the same scene 
presented itself — smokehouses drifting out in the pastin-es, negro 
quarters anchored in confusion against some oak and the modest 
residence just showing its eaves above water. The sun came 
up in a glory of carmine, and the trees were brilliant in their 
varied shades of green. Not a foot of soil is to be seen any- 
where, and the water is apparently growing deeper and deeper, 
for it reaches up to the branches of the largest trees. All along, 
the bordering willows have been denuded of leaves, showing how 
long the people have been at work gathering this fodder for 

500 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

their animals. An old man in a pirogue was asked how the 
willow leaves agreed with his cattle. He stopped in his work, 
and with an ominous shake of his head repHed: ''Well, sir, it's 
enough to keep warmth in their bodies, and that's all we expect, 
but it's hard on the hogs, particularly the small ones. They is 
dropping off powerful fast, but what can you do? It's all 
we've got." 

At thirty miles above the mouth of Black River the water 
extends from Natchez on the Mississippi across to the pine hills 
of Louisiana, a distance of seventy-three miles, and there is 
hardly a spot that is not ten feet under it. The tendency of the 
ciirrent up the Black is toward the west. In fact, so much is 
this the case, the waters of Red River have been driven down 
from toward the Calcasieu country, and the waters of the Black 
enter the Red some fifteen miles above the mouth of the former, 
a thing never before seen by even the oldest steamboatmen. 
The water now in sight of us is entirely from the Mississippi. 

Up to Trinity, or rather Troy, which is but a short distance 
below, the people have nearly all moved out, those remaining 
having enough for their present personal needs. Their cattle, 
though, are suffering and dying off quite fast, as the confinement 
on rafts and the food they get breed disease. 

After a short stop we started, and soon came to a section where 
there were many open fields and cabins thickly scattered about. 
Here were seen more pictures of distress. On the inside of the 
houses the inmates had built on boxes a scaffold on which they 
placed the furniture. The bedposts were sawed off on top, as 
the ceiHng was not more than four feet from the improvised 
floor. The buildings looked very insecure, and threaten every 
moment to float off. Near the houses were cattle standing 
breast-high in the water, perfectly impassive. They did not 
move in their places, but stood patiently waiting for help to 
come. The sight was a distressing one, and the poor creatures 
will be sure to die unless speedily rescued. Cattle differ from 
horses in this peculiar quaUty. A horse, after finding no relief 
comes, will swim off in search of food, whereas a beef will stand 
in its tracks until with exhaustion it drops in the water and 
drowns. 

At half past twelve o'clock a hail was given from a flatboat 
inside the Hne of the bank. Roimding to we ran alongside, and 
General York stepped aboard. He was just then engaged in 

SOI 



MARK TWAIN 

getting off stock, and welcomed the Times-Democrat boat 
heartily, as he said there was much need for her. He said that 
the distress was not exaggerated in the least. People were in 
a condition it was difficult even for one to imagine. The water 
was so high there was great danger of their houses being swept 
away. It had already risen so high that it was approaching the 
eaves, and when it reaches this point there is always imminent 
risk of their being swept away. If this occurs, there will be great 
loss of Hfe. The general spoke of the gallant work of many of the 
people in their attempts to save their stock, but thought that 
fully twenty-five per cent, had perished. Already twenty-five 
hundred people had received rations from Troy, on Black 
River, and he had towed out a great many cattle, but a very 
great quantity remained and were in dire need. The water was 
now eighteen inches higher than in 1874, and there was no land 
between Vidalia and the hills of Catahoula. 

At two o'clock the Susie reached Troy, sixty-five miles above 
the mouth of Black River. Here on the left comes in Little 
River; just beyond that the Ouachita, and on the right the 
Tensas. These three rivers form the Black River. Troy, or 
a portion of it, is situated on and around three large Indian 
mounds, circular in shape, which rise above the present water 
about twelve feet. They are about one hundred and fifty feet 
in diameter, and are about two hundred yards apart. The 
houses are all built between these mounds, and hence are all 
flooded to a depth of eighteen inches on their floors. 

These elevations, built by the aborigines hundreds of years 
ago, are the only points of refuge for miles. When we arrived 
we found them crowded with stock, all of which was thin and 
hardly able to stand up. They were mixed together, sheep, 
hogs, horses, mules, and cattle. One of these mounds has been 
used for many years as the graveyard, and to-day we saw 
ttenuated cows lying against the marble tombstones, chewing 
their cud in contentment, after a meal of com furnished by 
General York. Here, as below, the remarkable skill of the 
women and girls in the management of the smaller pirogues 
was noticed. Children were paddling about in these most 
ticldish crafts with all the nonchalance of adepts. 

General York has put into operation a perfect system in 
regard to furnishing relief. He makes a personal inspection of 
the place where it is asked, sees what is necessary to be done, 

502 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

and then, having two boats chartered, with flats, sends them 
promptly to the place, when the cattle are loaded and towed to 
the pine hills and uplands of Catahoula. He has made Troy 
his headquarters, and to this point boats come for their supply 
of feed for cattle. On the opposite side of Little River, which 
branches to the left out of Black, and between it and the 
Ouachita, is situated the town of Trinity, which is hourly 
threatened with destruction. It is much lower than Troy, and 
the water is eight and nine feet deep in the houses. A strong 
current sweeps through it, and it is remarkable that all of its 
houses have not gone before. The residents of both Troy and 
Trinity have been cared for, yet some of their stock have to be 
furnished with food. 

As soon as the Susie reached Troy she was turned over to 
General York, and placed at his disposition to carry out the 
work of relief more rapidly. Nearly all her supplies were 
landed on one of the mounds to lighten her, and she was headed 
down-stream to relieve those below. At Tom Hooper's place, 
a few miles from Troy, a large flat, with about fifty head of 
stock on board, was taken in tow. The animals were fed, and 
soon regained some strength. To-day we go on Little River, 
where the stiffering is greatest. 



DOWN BLACK RIVER 

Saturday Evening, March 25. 
We started down Black River quite early, under the direction 
of General York, to bring out what stock could be reached. 
Going down-river a flat in tow was left in a central locality, 
and from there men poled her back in the rear of plantations, 
picking up the animals wherever found. In the loft of a gin- 
house there were seventeen head found, and, after a gangway 
was built, they were led down into the flat without difiiculty. 
Taking a skiff with the general, your reporter was pulled up 
to a little house of two rooms, in which the water was standing 
two feet on the floors. In one of the large rooms were huddled 
the horses and cows of the place, while in the other the Widow 
Taylor and her son were seated on a scaffold raised on the floor. 
One or two dugouts were drifting about in the room, ready to be 
put in service at any time. When the flat was brought up, the 

503 



MARK TWAIN 

side of the house was cut away as the only means of getting 
the animals out, and the cattle were driven on board the boat. 
General York, in this as in every case, inquired if the family 
desired to leave, informing them that Major Burke of the Times- 
Democrat has sent the Susie up for that purpose. Mrs. Taylor 
said she thanked Major Burke, but she would try and hold out. 
The remarkable tenacity of the people here to their homes is 
beyond all comprehension. Just below, at a point sixteen miles 
from Troy, information was received that the house of Mr. Tom 
ElHs was in danger, and his family were all in it. We steamed 
there immediately, and a sad picture was presented. Looking 
out of the half of the window left above water was Mrs. Ellis, 
who is in feeble health, while at the door were her seven chil- 
dren, the oldest not fourteen years. One side of the house was 
given up to the work-animals, some twelve head, besides hogs. 
In the next room the family Hved, the water coming within 
two inches of the bedrail. The stove was below water, and the 
cooking was done on a fire on top of it. The house threatened 
to give way at any moment; one end of it was sinking, and, in 
fact, the building looked like a mere shell. As the boat rounded 
to, Mr. Ellis came out in a dugout, and General York told him 
that he had come to his relief; that the Times-Democrat boat was 
at his service and would remove his family at once to the hills, 
and on Monday a fiat would take out his stock, as, until that 
time, they would be busy. Notwithstanding the deplorable 
situation himself and family were in, Mr. ElHs did not want 
to leave. He said he thought he would wait until Monday, and 
take the risk of his house falHng. The children around the door 
looked perfectly contented, seeming to care Httle for the danger 
they were in. These are but two instances of the many. After 
weeks of privation and suffering people still cling to their houses, 
and leave only when there is not room between the water and 
the ceiHng to build a scaffold on which to stand. It seemed 
to be incomprehensible, yet the love for the old place was 
stronger than that for safety. 

After leaving the Ellis place, the next spot touched at was 
the Oswald place. Here the fiat was towed alongside the gin- 
house, where there were fifteen head standing in water; and 
yet, as they stood on scaffolds, their heads were above the top 
of the entrance. It was found impossible to get them out with- 
out cutting away a portion of the front; and so axes were brought 

504 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

into requisition and a gap made. After much labor the horses 
and mules were securely placed on the flat. 

At each place we stop there are always three, four, or more 
dugouts arriving, bringing information of stock in other places 
in need. Notwithstanding the fact that a great many had 
driven apart of their stock to the hills some time ago, there yet 
remains a large quantity, which General York, who is work- 
ing with indomitable energy, will get landed in the pine hills 
by Tuesday. 

All along Black River the Susie has been visited by scores of 
planters, whose tales are the repetition of those already heard 
of suffering and loss. An old planter, who has liv^ed on the river 
since 1844, said there never was such a rise, and he was satisfied 
more than one-quarter of the stock has been lost. Luckily the 
people cared first for their work-stock, and, when they could 
find it, horses and mules were housed in a place of safety. The 
rise, which still continues and was two inches last night, compels 
them to get them out to the hills; hence it is that the work of 
General York is of such a great value. From daylight to 
late at night he is going this way and that, cheering by his 
kindly words and directing with cakn judgment what is to be 
done. 

One unpleasant story, of a certain merchant in New Orleans, 
is told all along the river. It appears for some years past the 
planters have been deaHng with this individual, and many of 
them had balances in his hands. When the overflow came 
they wrote for coffee, for meal, and, in fact, for such Uttle 
necessities as were required. No response to these letters came, 
and others were written, and yet these old customers, with 
plantations under water, were refused even what was necessary 
to sustain life. It is needless to say he is not popular now on 
Black River. 

The hills spoken of as the place of refuge for the people and 
stock on Black River are in Catahoula parish, twenty-four miles 
from Black River. 

After filHng the flat with cattle we took on board the family 
of T. S. Hooper, seven in number, who could not longer remain 
in their dwelling, and we are now taking them up Little River 
to the hills. 



505 



MARK TWAIN 

THE FLOOD STILL RISING 

Troy, March 27, 1882, noon. 

The flood here is rising about three and a half inches every 
twenty-four hours, and rains have set in which will increase this. 
General York feels now that our efiEorts ought to be directed 
toward saving life, as the increase of the water has jeopardized 
many houses. We intend to go up the Tensas in a few minutes, 
and then we will return and go down Black River to take off 
families. There is a lack of steam transportation here to meet 
the emergency. The general has three boats chartered with 
flats in tow, but the demand for these to tow out stock is greater 
than they can meet with promptness. All are working night 
and day, and the Susie hardly stops for more than an hour 
anywhere. The rise has placed Trinity in a dangerous pHght, 
and momentarily it is expected that some of the houses will 
float off. Troy is a little higher, yet all are in the water. Re- 
ports have come in that a woman and child have been washed 
away below here, and two cabins floated off. Their occupants 
are the same who refused to come off day before yesterday. 
One would not beHeve the utter passiveness of the people. 

As yet no news has been received of the steamer Delia, which 
is supposed to be the one sunk in yesterday's storm on Lake 
Catahoula. She is due here now, but has not arrived. Even 
the mail here is most imcertain, and this I send by skiff to 
Natchez to get it to you. It is impossible to get accurate data 
as to past crops, etc., as those who know much about the matter 
have gone, and those who remain are not well versed in the pro- 
duction of this section. 

General York desires me to say that the amount of rations 
formerly sent should be duplicated and sent at once. It is 
impossible to make any estimate, for the people are fleeing to 
the hills, so rapid is the rise. The residents here are in a state 
of commotion that can only be appreciated when seen, and 
complete demoralization has set in. 

If rations are drawn for any particular section hereabouts 
they would not be certain to be distributed, so everything should 
be sent to Troy as a center, and the general will have it properly 
disposed of. He has sent for one hundred tents, and, if all 
go to the hills who are in motion now, two hundred will be 
required. 

506 



B 



The condition of this rich valley of the Lower Mississippi, 
immediately after and since the war, constituted one of the 
disastrous effects of war most to be deplored. Fictitious prop- 
erty in slaves was not only righteously destroyed, but very much 
of the work which had depended upon the slave labor was also 
destroyed or greatly impaired, especially the levee system. 

It might have been expected, by those who have not investi- 
gated the subject, that such important improvements as the 
construction and maintenance of the levees would have been 
assumed at once by the several states. But what can the state 
do where the people are under subjection to rates of interest 
ranging from eighteen to thirty per cent., and are also luider 
the necessity of pledging their crops in advance even of planting, 
at these rates, for the privilege of purchasing all of their sup- 
plies at one hundred per cent, profit? 

It has needed but little attention to make it perfectly obvious 
that the control of the Mississippi River, if undertaken at all, 
must be undertaken by the national government, and cannot 
be compassed by states. The river must be treated as a unit; 
its control cannot be compassed under a divided or separate 
system of administration. 

Neither are the states especially interested competent to 
combine among themselves for the necessary operations. The 
work must begin far up the river; at least as far as Cairo, if 
not beyond, and must be conducted upon a consistent general 
plan throughout the course of the river. 

It does not need technical or scientific knowledge to compre- 
hend the elements of the case, if one will give a Httle time and 
attention to the subject; and when a Mississippi River com- 
mission has been constituted, as the existing commission is, of 
thoroughly able men of different walks in life, may it not be 
suggested that their verdict in the case should be accepted as 

507 



MARK TWAIN 

conclusive, so far as any a priari theory of construction or control 
can be considered conclusive? 

It should be remembered that upon this board are General 
Gihnore, General Comstock, and General Suter of the United 
States Engineers; Professor Henry Mitchell (the most compe- 
tent authority on the question of hydrography) of the United 
States Coast Survey; B. B. Harrod, the State Engineer of 
Louisiana; Jas. B. Eads, whose success with the jetties at New 
Orleans is a warrant of his competency, and Judge Taylor of 
Indiana. 

It would be presumption on the part of any single man, 
however skilled, to contest the judgment of such a board as 
this. 

The method of improvement proposed by the commission is 
at once in accord with the results of engineering experience and 
with observations of nature where meeting our wants. As in 
nature the growth of trees and their proneness, where under- 
mined, to fall across the slope and support the bank secure at 
some points a fair depth of channel and some degree of perma- 
nence; so, in the project of the engineer, the use of timber and 
brush and the encouragement of forest growth are the main 
features. It is proposed to reduce the width, where excessive, 
by brushwood dykes, at first low, but raised higher and higher 
as the mud of the river settles under their shelter, and finally 
slope them back at the angle upon which willows will grow 
freely. In this work there are many details connected with the 
forms of these shelter dykes, their arrangements so as to present 
a series of settUng basins, etc., a description of which would only 
complicate the conception. Through the larger part of the 
river works of contraction will not be required, but nearly all 
the banks on the concave side of the bends must be held against 
the wear of the stream, and much of the opposite banks defended 
at critical points. The works having in view this conservative 
object may be generally designated works of revetment; and 
these also will be largely of brushwood, woven in continuous 
carpets, or twined into wire netting. This veneering process has 
been successfully employed on the Missouri River; and in some 
cases they have so covered themselves with sediments, and have 
become so overgrown with willows, that they may be regarded 
as permanent. In securing these mats rubblestone is to be 
used in small quantities, and in some instances the dressed slope 

508 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

between high and low river will have to be more or less paved 
with stone. 

Any one who has been on the Rhine will have observed opera- 
tions not unlike those to which we have just referred; and, 
indeed, most of the rivers of Europe flowing among their own 
alluvia have required similar treatment in the interest of navi- 
gation and agriculture. 

The levee is the crowning work of bank revetment, although 
not necessarily in immediate connection. It may be set back 
a short distance from the revetted bank; but it is, in effect, the 
requisite parapet. The flood river and the low river cannot be 
brought into register, and compelled to unite in the excavation 
of a single permanent channel, without a complete control of all 
the stages; and even the abnormal rise must be provided against, 
because this would endanger the levee, and once in force behind 
the works of revetment, would tear them also away. 

Under the general principle that the local slope of a river is 
the result and measure of the resistance of its bed, it is evident 
that a narrow and deep stream should have less slope, because 
it has less frictional surface in proportion to capacity; i. e., less 
perimeter in proportion to area of cross-section. The ultimate 
effect of levees and revetments, confining the floods and bringing 
all the stages of the river into registry, is to deepen the channel 
and let down the slope. The first effect of the levees is to raise 
the surface; but this, by inducing greater velocity of flow, in- 
evitably causes an enlargement of section, and if this enlarge- 
ment is prevented from being made at the expense of banks, 
the bottom must give way and the form of the waterway be so 
improved as to admit this flow with less rise. The actual experi- 
ence with levees upon the Mississippi River, with no attempt to 
hold the banks, has been favorable, and no one can doubt, upon 
the evidence furnished in the reports of the commission, that if 
the earliest levees had been accompanied by revetment of banks, 
and made complete, we should have to-day a river navigable at 
low water and an adjacent country safe from inundation. 

Of course it would be illogical to conclude that the con- 
strained river can ever lower its flood slope so as to make levees 
unnecessary, but it is believed that, by this lateral constraint, 
the river as a conduit may be so improved in form that even 
those rare floods which result from the coincident rising of many 
tributaries will find vent without destroying levees of ordinary 

- 509 



MARK TWAIN 

height. That the actual capacity of a channel through alluvium 
depends upon its service during floods has been often shown, but 
this capacity does not include anomalous, but recurrent, floods. 

It is hardly worth while to consider the projects for relieving 
the Mississippi River floods by creating new outlets, since these 
sensational propositions have commended themselves only to 
unthinking minds, and have no support among engineers. Were 
the river-bed cast-iron, a resort to openings for surplus waters 
might be a necessity; but as the bottom is yielding, and the best 
form of outlet is a single deep channel, as realizing the least 
ratio of perimeter to area of cross-section, there could not well 
be a more unphilosophical method of treatment than the multi- 
plication of avenues of escape. 

In the foregoing statement the attempt has been made to 
condense in as limited a space as the importance of the subject 
would permit, the general elements of the problem, and the 
general features of the proposed method of improvement which 
has been adopted by the Mississippi River Commission. 

The writer cannot help feeling that it is somewhat presumptu- 
ous on his part to attempt to present the facts relating to an 
enterprise which calls for the highest scientific skill; but it is a 
matter which interests every citizen of the United States, and 
is one of the methods of reconstruction which ought to be 
approved. It is a war claim which implies no private gain, and 
no compensation except for one of the cases of destruction 
incident to war which may well be repaired by the people of the 
whole country. 

Edward Atkinson. 

Boston, April 14, 1882. 



RECEPTION OF CAPTAIN BASIL HALL'S BOOK IN THE 

UNITED STATES 

Having now arrived nearly at the end of our travels, I am 
induced, ere I conclude, again to mention what I consider as 
one of the most remarkable traits in the national character of 
the Americans: namely, their exquisite sensitiveness and soreness 
respecting everjrthing said or written concerning them. Of this, 
perhaps, the most remarkable example I can give is the effect 
produced on nearly every class of readers by the appearance of 
Captain Basil Hall's Travels in North America. In fact, it was 
a sort of moral earthquake, and the vibration it occasioned 
through the nerves of the repubhc, from one comer of the 
Union to the other, was by no means over when I left the coun- 
try in July, 1 83 1, a couple of years after the shock. 

I was in Cincinnati when these volumes came out, but it was 
not till July, 1830, that I procured a copy of them. One book- 
seller to whom I applied told me that he had had a few copies 
before he understood the nature of the work, but that, after 
becoming acquainted with it, nothing should induce him to sell 
another. Other persons of his profession must, however, have 
been less scrupulous; for the book was read in city, town, village, 
and hamlet, steamboat and stage-coach, and a sort of war- 
whoop was sent forth perfectly unprecedented in my recollection 
upon any occasion whatever. 

An ardent desire for approbation, and a delicate sensitiveness 
under censiu-e, have alwa5rs, I believe, been considered as 
amiable traits of character, but the condition into which the 
appearance of Captain Hall's work threw the republic shows 
plainly that these feelings, if carried to excess, produce a weak- 
ness which amounts to imbecility. 

It was perfectly astonishing to hear men who, on other sub- 



MARK TWAIN 

jects, were of some judgment, utter their opinions upon this. 
I never heard of any instance in which the common sense gener- 
ally found in national criticism was so overthrown by passion. 
I do not speak of the want of justice, and of fair and liberal 
interpretation: these, perhaps, were hardly to be expected. 
Other nations have been called thin-skinned, but the citizens of 
the Union have, apparently, no skins at all; they wince if a 
breeze blows over them, unless it be tempered with adulation. 
It was not, therefore, very surprising that the acute and forcible 
observations of a traveler they knew would be Hstened to should 
be received testily. The extraordinary features of the business 
were, first, the excess of the rage into which they lashed them- 
selves; and, secondly, the puerility of the inventions by which 
they attempted to account for the severity with which they 
fancied they had been treated. 

Not content with declaring that the volumes contained no 
word of truth from beginning to end (which is an assertion I 
heard made very nearly as often as they were mentioned), the 
whole country set to work to discover the causes why Captain 
Hall had visited the United States, and why he had published 
his book. 

I have heard it said with as much precision and gravity as 
if the statement had been conveyed by an official report, that 
Captain Hall had been sent out by the British government 
expressly for the purpose of checking the growing admiration 
of England for the government of the United States — ^that it 
was by a commission from the Treasury he had come, and that 
it was only in obedience to orders that he had found anjrthing 
to object to. 

I do not give this as the gossip of a coterie; I am persuaded 
that it is the beHef of a very considerable portion of the coimtry. 
So deep is the conviction of this singular people that they cannot 
be seen without being admired, that they will not admit the 
possibility that any one should honestly and sincerely find 
aught to disprove in them or their country. 

The American Reviews are, many of them, I believe, well 
known in England; I need not, therefore, quote them here, but 
I sometimes wondered that they, none of them, ever thought 
of translating Obadiah's curse into classic American; if they had 
done so, on placing [he, Basil Hall] between brackets, instead 
of [he, Obadiah] it would have saved them a world of trouble, 

512 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

I can hardly describe the curiosity with which I sat down 
at length to peruse these tremendous volumes; still less can I 
do justice to my surprise at their contents. To say that I have 
found not one exaggerated statement throughout the work is 
by no means saying enough. It is impossible for any one who 
knows the country not to see that Captain Hall earnestly sought 
out things to admire and commend. When he praises, it is with 
evident pleasure; and when he finds fault, it is with evident re- 
luctance and restraint, excepting where motives purely patriotic 
urge him to state roundly what it is for the benefit of his country 
should be known. 

In fact. Captain Hall saw the country to the greatest possible 
advantage. Furnished, of course, with letters of introduction to 
the most distinguished individuals, and with the still more in- 
fluential recommendation of his own reputation, he was received 
in fuU drawing-room style and state from one end of the Union 
to the other. He saw the country in full dress, and had Httle 
or no opportunity of judging of it unhouselled, unanointed, 
unannealed, with all its imperfections on its head, as I and my 
family too often had. 

Captain Hall had certainly excellent opportunities of making 
himself acquainted with the form of the government and the 
laws; and of receiving, moreover, the best oral commentary upon 
them, in conversation with the most distinguished citizens. 
Of these opportunities he made excellent use; nothing important 
met his eye which did not receive that sort of analytical atten- 
tion which an experienced and philosophical traveler alone can 
give. This has made his volumes highly interesting and valu- 
able; but I am deeply persuaded that, were a man of equal 
penetration to visit the United States with no other means of 
becoming acquainted with the national character than the ordi- 
nary working-day intercoiu-se of Hfe, he would conceive an 
infinitely lower idea of the moral atmosphere of the countn; 
than Captain Hall appears to have done; and the internal con- 
viction on my mind is strong that, if Captain Hall had not 
placed a firm restraint on himself, he must have given expression 
to far deeper indignation than any he has uttered against many 
points in the American character, with which he shows from 
other circumstances that he was well acquainted. His rule 
appears to have been to state just so much of the truth as would 
leave on the mind of his readers a correct impression, at least the 

S13 



MARK TWAIN 

cost of pain to the sensitive folks he was writing about. He 
states his own opinions and feelings, and leaves it to be inferred 
that he has good ground for adopting them; but he spares the 
Americans the bitterness which a detail of the circumstances 
would have produced. 

If any one chooses to say that some wicked antipathy to twelve 
milHons of strangers is the origin of my opinion, I must bear 
it; and were the question one of mere idle speculation, I cer- 
tainly would not court the abuse I must meet for stating it. 
But it is not so. 

The candor which he expresses, and evidently feels, they 
mistake for irony, or totally distrust; his unwillingness to give 
pain to persons from whom he has received kindness, they 
scornfully reject as affectation; and although they must know 
right well, in their own secret hearts, how infinitely more they 
lay at his mercy than he has chosen to betray, they pretend, 
even to themselves, that he has exaggerated the bad points of 
their character and institutions; whereas, the truth is that he 
has let them off with a degree of tenderness which may be quite 
suitable for him to exercise, however Uttle merited; while, at the 
same time, he has most industriously magnified their merits, 
whenever he could possibly find anything favorable. 



D 

THE UNDYING HEAD 

In a remote part of the North Hved a man and his sister, who 
had never seen a human being. Seldom, if ever, had the man 
any cause to go from home; for, as his wants demanded food, 
he had only to go a Httle distance from the lodge, and there, in 
some particular spot, place his arrows, with their barbs in the 
ground. TelHng his sister where they had been placed, every 
morning she would go in search, and never fail of finding each 
stuck through the heart of a deer. She had then only to drag 
them into the lodge and prepare their food. Thus she Hved 
till she attained womanhood, when one day her brother, whose 
name was lamo, said to her: "Sister, the time is at hand when 
you will be ill. Listen to my advice. If you do not, it wdll 
probably be the cause of my death. Take the implements 
with which we kindle our fires. Go some distance from our 
lodge and build a separate fire. When you are in want of food, 
I will tell you where to find it. You must cook for yourself, 
and I will for myself. When you are ill, do not attempt to 
come near the lodge, or bring any of the utensils you use. Be 
sure always to fasten to your belt the implements you need, 
for you do not know when the time will come. As for myself, 
I must do the best I can." His sister promised to obey him in 
all he had said. 

Shortly after, her brother had cause to go from home. She 
was alone in her lodge combing her hair. She had just imtied 
the belt to which the implements were fastened, when suddenly 
the event to which her brother had alluded occurred. She ran 
out of the lodge, but in her haste forgot the belt. Afraid to 
return, she stood for some time thinking. Finally, she decided 
to enter the lodge and get it. For, thought she, my brother is 
not at home, and I will stay but a moment to catch hold of it. 
She went back. Running in suddenly, she caught hold of it, 

51S 



MARK TWAIN 

and was coming out when her brother came in sight. He knew 
what was the matter. "Oh," he said, "did I not tell you to 
take care? But now you have killed me." She was going on 
her way, but her brother said to her, "What can you do there 
now? The accident has happened. Go in, and stay where 
you have always stayed. And what will become of you? You 
have killed me." 

He then laid aside his hunting-dress and accoutrements, and 
soon after both his feet began to turn black, so that he could 
not move. Still he directed his sister where to place the arrows, 
that she might always have food. The inflammation continued 
to increase, and had now reached his first rib; and he said, "Sis- 
ter, my end is near. You must do as I tell you. You see my 
medicine-sack, and my war-club tied to it. It contains all my 
medicines, and my war-plimies, and my paints of all colors. As 
soon as the inflammation reaches my breast, you will take my 
war-club. It has a sharp point, and you will cut off my head. 
When it is free from my body, take it, place its neck in the sack, 
which you must open at one end. Then hang it up in its former 
place. Do not forget my bow and arrows. One of the last 
you will take to procure food. The remainder tie in my sack, 
and then hang it up, so that I can look toward the door. Now 
and then I will speak to you, but not often." His sister again 
promised to obey. 

In a little time his breast was affected. "Now," said he, 
"take the club and strike off my head." She was afraid, but he 
told her to muster courage. ''Strike!'^ said he, and a smile was 
on his face. Mustering all her courage, she gave the blow and 
cut off the head. "Now," said the head, "place me where I 
told you." And fearfully she obeyed it in all its commands. 
Retaining its animation, it looked around the lodge as usual, and 
it would command its sister to go in such places as it thought 
would procure for her the flesh of different animals she needed. 
One day the head said: "The time is not distant when I shall be 
freed from this situation, and I shall have to undergo many sore 
evils. So the superior manito decrees, and I must bear all 
patiently." In this situation we must leave the head. 

In a certain part of the country was a village inhabited by a 
numerous and warlike band of Indians. In this village was a 
family of ten young men — brothers. It was in the spring of 
the year that the yoimgest of these blackened his face and 

Si6 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

fasted. His dreams were propitious. Having ended his fast, 
he went secretly for his brothers at night, so that none in the 
village could overhear or find out the direction they intended 
to go. Though their drum was heard, yet that was a common 
occturence. Having ended the usual formalities, he told how 
favorable his dreams were, and that he had called them to- 
gether to know if they would accompany him in a war ex- 
cursion. They all answered they would. The third brother 
from the eldest, noted for his oddities, coming up with his 
war-club when his brother had ceased speaking, jumped up. 
**Yes," said he, "I will go, and this will be the way I will treat 
those I am going to fight"; and he struck the post in the center 
of the lodge, and gave a yell. The others spoke to him saying: 
"Slow, slow, Mudjikewis! when you are in other people's lodges." 
So he sat down. Then, in turn, they took the drum, and sang 
their songs, and closed with a feast. The youngest told them 
not to whisper their intention to their wives, but secretly to 
prepare for their journey. They all promised obedience, and 
Mudjikewis was the first to say so. 

The time for their departure drew near. Word was given to 
assemble on a certain night, when they would depart imme- 
diately. Mudjikewis was loud in his demands for his moccasins. 
Several times his wife asked him the reason. "Besides," said 
she, "you have a good pair on." "Quick, quick!" said he, 
"since you must know, we are going on a war excursion; so 
be quick." He thus revealed the secret. That night they met 
and started. The snow was on the ground, and they traveled 
all night, lest others should follow them. When it was dayUght, 
the leader took snow and made a ball of it, then tossing it into 
the air, he said: "It was in this way I saw snow fall in a dream, 
so that I could not be tracked." And he told them to keep 
close to each other for fear of losing themselves, as the snow 
began to fall in very large flakes. Near as they walked, it was 
with difficulty they could see each other. The snow continued 
falling all that day and the following night, so it was impossible 
to track them. 

They had now walked for several days, and Mudjikewis was 
always in the rear. One day, running suddenly forward, he 
gave the saw-saw-quan,^ and struck a tree with his war-club, 

* War-whoop. 
517 



MARK TWAIN 

and it broke into pieces as if struck with lightning. "Brothers," 
said he, "this will be the way I will serve those we are going 
to fight." The leader answered, "Slow, slow, Mudjikewis! 
The one I lead you to is not to be thought of so lightly." Again 
he fell back and thought to himself: "What! what! Who can 
this be he is leading us to?" He felt fearful, and was silent. 
Day after day they traveled on, till they came to an extensive 
plain, on the borders of which human bones were bleaching in 
the sun. The leader spoke: "They are the bones of those who 
have gone before us. None has ever yet returned to tell the 
sad tale of their fate." Again Mudjikewis became restless, and, 
running forward, gave the accustomed yell. Advancing to a 
large rock which stood above the ground, he struck it, and it 
fell to pieces. "See, brothers," said he, "thus will I treat those 
whom we are going to fight." " Still, still! " once more said the 
leader. "He to whom I am leading you is not to be compared 
to the rock." 

Mudjikewis fell back thoughtful, saying to himself: "I won- 
der who this can be that he is going to attack"; and he was 
afraid. Still they continued to see the remains of former war- 
riors, who had been to the place where they were now going, some 
of whom had retreated as far back as the place where the}'" first 
saw the bones, beyond which no one had ever escaped. At last 
they came to a piece of rising ground, from which they plainly 
distinguished, sleeping on a distant mountain, a mammoth 
bear. 

The distance between them was very great, but the size of 
the animal caused him to be plainly seen. "There!" said the 
leader, "it is he to whom I am leading you; here our troubles 
will commence, for he is a mishemokwa and a manito. It is 
he who has that we prize so dearly {i. e., wampum), to obtain 
which the warriors whose bones we saw sacrificed their lives. 
You must not be fearful; be manly. We shall find him asleep." 
Then the leader went forward and touched the belt around the 
animal's neck. "This," said he, "is what we must get. It 
contains the wampum." Then they requested the eldest to try 
and slip the belt over the bear's head, who appeared to be fast 
asleep, as he was not in the least disturbed by the attempt to 
obtain the belt. All their efforts were in vain, till it came to 
the one next the youngest. He tried, and the belt moved nearly 
over the monster's head, but he could get it no farther. Then 

Si8 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

the youngest one, and the leader, made his attempt, and suc- 
ceeded. Placing it on the back of the oldest, he said, "Now we 
must nm," and off they started. When one became fatigued 
with its weight, another would reheve him. Thus they ran 
till they had passed the bones of all former warriors, and were 
some distance beyond, when, looking back, they saw the monster 
slowly rising. He stood some time before he missed his wam- 
pimi. Soon they heard his tremendous howl, Hke distant 
thimder, slowly filling all the sky; and then they heard him 
speak and say, "Who can it be that has dared to steal my 
wampimi? Earth is not so large but that I can find them"; 
and he descended from the hill in pursuit. As if convulsed, the 
earth shook, with every jump he made. Very soon he ap- 
proached the party. They, however, kept the belt, exchanging 
it from one to another, and encouraging each other; but he 
gained on them fast. "Brothers," said the leader, "has never 
any one of you, when fasting, dreamed of some friendly spirit 
who would aid you as a guardian?" A dead silence followed. 
"Well," said he, "fasting, I dreamed of being in danger of 
instant death, when I saw a small lodge, with smoke curling 
from its top. An old man lived in it, and I dreamed he helped 
me; and may it be verified soon," he said, running forward and 
giving the pecuHar yell, and a howl as if the sounds came from 
the depth of his stomach, and what is called checaudum. Getting 
upon a piece of rising ground, behold! a lodge, with smoke 
curling from its top, appeared. This gave them all new strength, 
and they ran forward and entered it. The leader spoke to the 
old man who sat in the lodge, saying, "Nemesho, help us; we 
claim your protection, for the great bear will kill us." "Sit 
down and eat, my grandchildren," said the old man. "Who is 
a great manito?" said he. "There is none but me; but let me 
look," and he opened the door of the lodge, when lo! at a little 
distance he saw the enraged animal coming on, with slow but 
powerful leaps. He closed the door. "Yes," said he, "he is 
indeed a great manito. My grandchildren, you will be the 
cause of my losing my Hfe; you asked my protection, and I 
granted it; so now, come what may, I will protect you. When 
the bear arrives at the door, you must run out of the other door 
of the lodge." Then putting his hand to the side of the lodge 
where he sat, he brought out a bag which he opened. Taking 
out two small black dogs, he placed them before him. "These 

519 



MARK TWAIN 

are the ones I use when I fight," said he; and he commenced 
patting with both hands the sides of one of them, and he began 
to swell out, so that he soon filled the lodge by his bulk; and he 
had great strong teeth. When he attained his full size he 
growled, and from that moment, as from instinct, he jumped 
out at the door and met the bear, who in another leap would 
have reached the lodge. A terrible combat ensued. The skies 
rang with the howls of the fierce monsters. The remaining dog 
soon took the field. The brothers, at the onset, took the advice 
of the old man, and escaped through the opposite side of the 
lodge. They had not proceeded far before they heard the dying 
cry of one of the dogs, and, soon after, of the other. "Well," 
said the leader, "the old man will share their fate; so run; he 
will soon be after us." They started with fresh vigor, for they 
had received food from the old man; but very soon the bear 
came in sight, and again was fast gaining upon them. Again 
the leader asked the brothers if they could do nothing for their 
safety. All were silent. The leader, running forward, did as 
before. "I dreamed," he cried, "that, being in great trouble, 
an old man helped me who was a manito; we shall soon see his 
lodge." Taking courage, they still went on. After going a 
short distance they saw the lodge of the old manito. They 
entered immediately and claimed his protection, telling him a 
manito was after them. The old man, setting meat before 
them, said: "Eat! Who is a manito? There is no manito but 
me; there is none whom I fear"; and the earth trembled as the 
monster advanced. The old man opened the door and saw 
him coming. He shut it slowly, and said: "Yes, my grand- 
children, you have brought trouble upon me." Procuring his 
medicine-sack, he took out his small war-clubs of black stone, 
and told the young men to run through the other side of the 
lodge. As he handled the clubs, they became very large, and 
the old man stepped out just as the bear reached the door. 
Then striking him with one of the clubs, it broke in pieces; the 
bear stumbled. Renewing the attempt with the other war-club, 
that also was broken, but the bear fell senseless. Each blow the 
old man gave him sounded Hke a clap of thunder, and the howls 
of the bear ran along till they filled the heavens. 

The young men had now run some distance, when they looked 
back. They could see that the bear was recovering from the 
blows. First he moved his paws, and soon they saw him rise 

520 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

on his feet. The old man shared the fate of the first, for they 
now heard his cries as he was torn in pieces. Again the monster 
was in pursuit, and fast overtaking them. Not yet discouraged, 
the young men kept on their way; but the bear was now so close 
that the leader once more appHed to his brothers, but they 
could do nothing. ''Well," said he, "my dreams will soon be 
exhausted; after this I have but one more." He advanced, 
invoking his guardian spirit to aid him. "Once," said he, "I 
dreamed that, being sorely pressed, I came to a large lake, on 
the shore of which was a canoe, partly out of water, having ten 
paddles all in readiness. Do not fear," he cried, "we shall soon 
get it." And so it was, even as he had said. Coming to the 
lake, they saw the canoe with ten paddles, and immediately 
they embarked. Scarcely had they reached the center of the 
lake, when they saw the bear arrive at its borders. Lifting 
himself on his hind legs, he looked all around. Then he waded 
into the water; then, losing his footing, he turned back, and 
commenced making the circuit of the lake. Meantime the 
party remained stationary in the center to watch his movements. 
He traveled all around, till at last he came to the place from 
whence he started. Then he commenced drinking up the 
water, and they saw the current fast setting in toward his open 
mouth. The leader encouraged them to paddle hard for the 
opposite shore. When only a short distance from the land, the 
current had increased so much that they were drawn back by 
it, and all their efforts to reach it were in vain. 

Then the leader again spoke, telHng them to meet their fates 
manfully. "Now is the time, Mudjikewis," said he, "to show 
your prowess. Take courage and sit at the bow of the canoe; 
and when it approaches his mouth, try what effect your club 
will have on his head." He obeyed, and stood ready to give 
the blow; while the leader, who steered, directed the canoe for 
the open mouth of the monster. 

Rapidly advancing, they were just about to enter his mouth, 
when Mudjikewis struck him a tremendous blow on the head, 
and gave the saw-saw-quan. The bear's limbs doubled under 
him, and he fell, stimned by the blow. But before Mudjikewis 
could renew it, the monster disgorged all the water he had 
drank, with a force which sent the canoe with great velocity 
to the opposite shore. Instantly leaving the canoe, again they 
fled, and on they went till they were completely exhausted. 

S2I 



MARK TWAIN 

The earth again shook, and soon they saw the monster hard 
after them. Their spirits drooped, and they felt discouraged. 
The leader exerted himself, by actions and words, to cheer them 
up; and once more he asked them if they thought of nothing, 
or could do nothing for their rescue; and, as before, all were 
silent. "Then," he said, "this is the last time I can apply 
to my guardian spirit. Now, if we do not succeed, our fates are 
decided." He ran forward, invoking his spirit with great earnest- 
ness, and gave the yell. "We shall soon arrive," said he to 
his brothers, "at the place where my last guardian spirit dwells. 
In him I place great confidence. Do not, do not be afraid, or 
your Hmbs will be fear-bound. We shall soon reach his lodge. 
Rim, run I" he cried. 

Returning now to lamo, he had passed all the time in the 
same condition we had left him, the head directing his sister, in 
order to procure food, where to place the magic arrows, and 
speaking at long intervals. One day the sister saw the eyes of 
the head brighten, as if with pleasure. At last it spoke: "Oh, 
sister," it said, "in what a pitiful situation you have been the 
cause of placing me! Soon, very soon, a party of young men 
will arrive and apply to me for aid; but alas! How can I give 
what I woiild have done with so much pleasure? Nevertheless, 
take two arrows and place them where you have been in the 
habit of placing the others, and have meat prepared and cooked 
before they arrive. When you hear them coming and calHng 
on my name, go out and say, 'Alas! it is long ago that an acci- 
dent befell him. I was the cause of it.' If they still come 
near, ask them in, and set meat before them. And now you 
must follow my directions strictly. When the bear is near, 
go out and meet him. You will take my medicine-sack, bow 
and arrows, and my head. You must then untie the sack, and 
spread out before you my paints of all colors, my war-eagle 
feathers, my tufts of dried hair, and whatever else it contains. 
As the bear approaches, you will take all these articles, one by 
one, and say to him, 'This is my deceased brother's paint,' and 
so on with all the other articles, throwing each of them as far 
as you can. The virtues contained in them will cause him to 
totter; and, to complete his destruction, you will take my head, 
and that too you will cast as far off as you can, crying aloud, 
*See, this is my deceased brother's head!' He will then fail 
senseless. By this time the young men will have eaten, and you 

522 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

will call them to your assistance. You must then cut the 
carcass into pieces — yes, into small pieces — and scatter them to 
the four winds; for, unless you do this, he will again revive." 
She promised that all should be done as he said. She had only 
time to prepare the meat, when the voice of the leader was 
heard calHng upon lamo for aid. The woman went out, and 
said as her brother had directed. But the war-party, being 
closely pursued, came up to the lodge. She invited them in, 
and placed the meat before them. While they were eating, 
they heard the bear approaching. Untying the medicine-sack 
and taking the head, she had all in readiness for his approach. 
When he came up she did as she had been told; and before she 
had expended the paints and feathers, the bear began to totter, 
but, still advancing, came close to the woman. Saying as she 
was commanded, she then took the head, and cast it as far from 
her as she could. As it rolled along the ground, the blood, 
excited by the feelings of the head in this terrible scene, gushed 
from the nose and mouth. The bear, tottering, soon fell with 
a tremendous noise. Then she cried for help, and the young 
men came rushing out, having partially regained their strength 
and spirits. 

Mudjikewis, stepping up, gave a yell and struck him a blow 
upon the head. This he repeated, till it seemed Hke a mass of 
brains, while the others, as quick as possible, cut him into very 
small pieces, which they then scattered in every direction. 
While thus employed, happening to look around where they had 
thrown the meat, wonderful to behold, they saw starting up and 
running off in every direction small black bears, such as are seen 
at the present day. The country was soon overspread with 
these black animals. And it was from this monster that the 
present race of bears derived their origin. 

Having thus overcome their pursuer, they returned to the 
lodge. In the mean time, the woman, gathering the implements 
she had used, and the head, placed them again in the sack. But 
the head did not speak again, probably from its great exertion 
to overcome the monster. 

Having spent so much time and traversed so vast a country 
in their flight, the young men gave up the idea of ever returning 
to their own country, and game being plenty, they determined to 
remain where they now were. One day they moved off some 
distance from the lodge for the purpose of hunting, having left 

523 



MARK TWAIN 

the wampum with the woman. They were very successful, and 
amused themselves, as all yoimg men do when alone, by talking 
and jesting with each other. One of them spoke and said, 
"We having all this sport to ourselves; let us go and ask our 
sister if she will not let us bring the head to this place, as it 
is still aUve. It may be pleased to hear us talk, and be in 
our company. In the mean time take food to our sister." 
They went and requested the head. She told them to take it, 
and they took it to their hunting-grounds, and tried to amuse 
it, but only at times did they see its eyes beam with pleasure. 
One day, while busy in their encampment, they were unex- 
pectedly attacked by unknown Indians. The skirmish was long- 
contested and bloody; many of their foes were slain, but still 
they were thirty to one. The young men fought desperately 
till they were all killed. The attacking party then retreated to 
a height of ground, to muster their men, and to count the number 
of missing and slain. One of their young men had stayed away, 
and, in endeavoring to overtake them, came to the place where 
the head was hung up. Seeing that alone retain animation, he 
eyed it for some time with fear and surprise. However, he took 
it down and opened the sack, and was much pleased to see the 
beautiful feathers, one of which he placed on his head. 

Starting off, it waved gracefully over him till he reached his 
party, when he threw down the head and sack, and told them 
how he had found it, and that the sack was full of paints and 
feathers. They all looked at the head and made sport of it. 
Numbers of the young men took the paint and painted them- 
selves, and one of the party took the head by the hair and 
said: 

"Look, you ugly thing, and see your paints on the faces of 
warriors." 

But the feathers were so beautiful that numbers of them also 
placed them on their heads. Then again they used all kinds of 
indignity to the head, for which they were in turn repaid by the 
death of those who had used the feathers. Then the chief com- 
manded them to throw away all except the head. "We will 
see," said he, "when we get home what we can do with it. We 
will try to make it shut its eyes." 

When they reached their homes they took it to the council 
lodge and hung it up before the fire, fastening it with rawhide 
soaked, which would shrink and become tightened by the action 

524 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

of the fire. "We will then see," they said, "if we cannot make 
it shut its eyes." 

Meantime, for several days, the sister had been waiting for 
the young men to bring back the head; till at last, getting im- 
patient, she went in search of it. The young men she found 
lying within short distances of each other, dead, and covered 
with wounds. Various other bodies lay scattered in different 
directions around them. She searched for the head and sack, 
but they were nowhere to be found. She raised her voice and 
wept, and blackened her face. Then she walked in different 
directions, till she came to the place from whence the head had 
been taken. Then she found the magic bow and arrows, where 
the young men, ignorant of their qualities, had left them. She 
thought to herself that she would find her brother's head, and 
came to a piece of rising groimd, and there saw some of his 
paints and feathers. These she carefully put up, and hung upon 
the branch of a tree till her return. 

At dusk she arrived at the first lodge of a very extensive 
village. Here she used a charm, common among Indians when 
they wish to meet with a kind reception. On applying to the 
old man and woman of the lodge, she was kindly received. She 
made known her errand. The old man promised to aid her, and 
told her the head was hung up before the council fire, and that 
the chiefs of the village, with their young men, kept watch over 
it continually. The former are considered as manitoes. She 
said she only wished to see it, and would be satisfied if she could 
only get to the door of the lodge. She knew she had not suffi- 
cient power to take it by force. "Come with me," said the 
Indian, "I will take you there." They went, and they took 
their seats near the door. The council lodge was filled with 
warriors, amusing themselves with games, and constantly keep- 
ing up a fire to smoke the head, as they said, to make dry meat. 
They saw the head move, and not knowing what to make of 
it, one spoke and said: "Ha! ha! It is beginning to feel the 
effects of the smoke." The sister looked up from the door, and 
her eyes met those of her brother, and tears rolled down the 
cheeks of the head. "Well," said the chief, "I thought we 
would make you do something at last. Look! look at it — 
shedding tears!" said he to those around him; and they all 
laughed and passed their jokes upon it. The chief, looking 
around and observing the woman, after some time said to the 

$^5 



MARK TWAIN 

man who came with her: ''Who have you got there? I have 
never seen that woman before in our village." "Yes," replied 
the man, "you have seen her; she is a relation of mine, and 
seldom goes out. She stays at my lodge, and asked me to allow 
her to come with me to this place." In the center of the lodge 
sat one of those young men who are always forward and fond 
of boasting and displaying themselves before others. "Why," 
said he, "I've seen her often, and it is to this lodge I go, almost 
every night, to court her." All the others laughed, and con- 
tinued their games. The young man did not know he was telling 
a lie to the woman's advantage, who by that means escaped. 

She returned to the man's lodge, and immediately set out for 
her own country. Coming to the spot where the bodies of her 
adopted brothers lay, she placed them together, their feet 
toward the east. Then, taking an ax which she had, she cast 
it up into the air, crying out, "Brothers, get up from under 
it, or it will fall on you!" This she repeated three times, and 
the third time the brothers all arose and stood on their feet. 

Mudjikewis commenced rubbing his eyes and stretching him- 
self. "Why," said he, "I have overslept myself." "No, 
indeed," said one of the others; "do you not know we were all 
killed, and that it is our sister who has brought us to Hfe?" 
The young men took the bodies of their enemies and binned 
them. Soon after, the woman went to procure wives for them 
in a distant country, they knew not where; but she returned 
with ten young women, whom she gave to the ten young men, 
beginning with the eldest. Mudjikewis stepped to and fro, 
uneasy lest he should not get the one he liked. But he was not 
disappointed, for she fell to his lot. And they were well matched, 
for she was a female magician. They then all moved into a 
very large lodge, and their sister told them that the women 
must now take turns in going to her brother's head every night, 
trying to untie it. They all said they would do so with pleasure. 
The eldest made the first attempt, and with a rushing noise she 
fled through the air. 

Toward daylight she returned. She had been unsuccessful, 
as she succeeded in untying only one of the knots. All took 
their turns regularly, and each one succeeded in untying only 
one knot each time. But when the youngest went, she com- 
menced the work as soon as she reached the lodge; although 
it had always been occupied, still the Indians never could see 

526 



LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI 

any one. For ten nights now the smoke haxi not ascended, but 
filled the lodge and drove them out. This last night they were 
all driven out, and the young woman carried off the head. 

The young people and the sister heard the young woman 
coming high through the air, and they heard her saying: "Pre- 
pare the body of our brother." And as soon as they heard it, 
they went to a small lodge where the black body of lamo lay. 
His sister commenced cutting the neck part, from which the 
neck had been severed. She cut so deep as to cause it to bleed; 
and the others who were present, by rubbing the body and 
applying medicines, expelled the blackness. In the mean time, 
the one who brought it, by cutting the neck of the head, caused 
that also to bleed. 

As soon as she arrived, they placed that close to the body, 
and, by aid of medicines and various other means, succeeded 
in restoring lamo to all his former beauty and manliness. All 
rejoiced in the happy termination of their troubles, and they had 
spent some time joyfully together, when lamo said: "Now I 
will divide the wampum"; and getting the belt which contained 
it, he commenced with the eldest, giving it in equal portions. 
But the youngest got the most splendid and beautiful, as the 
bottom of the belt held the richest and rarest. 

They were told that, since they had all once died, and were 
restored to life, they were no longer mortal, but spirits, and 
they were assigned different stations in the invisible world. 
Only Mudjikewis's place was, however, named. He was to 
direct the west wind, hence generally called Kebeyun, there to 
remain forever. They were commanded, as they had it in their 
power, to do good to the inhabitants of the earth, and, for- 
getting their sufferings in procuring the wampum, to give all 
things with a liberal hand. And they were also commanded that 
it should also be held by them sacred; those grains or shells of 
the pale hue to be emblematic of peace, while those of the darker 
hue. would lead to evil and war. 

The spirits then, amid songs and shouts, took their flight to 
their respective abodes on high; while lamo with his sister 
lamoqua, descended into the depths below. 



THE END 



9 66 




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